Who owns, who pays? New insights on property ownership and tax compliance among men and women

Think of property taxes as a sleeping giant. As countries search for ways to raise revenue equitably, recurrent taxes on immovable property emerge as a promising yet underutilized tool—after all, real estate is where much of society's wealth resides. But as this tax gains prominence in policy discussions, we're missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: gender. Who owns property? Who pays the tax? And who ultimately benefits? Answering these questions is essential to designing fairer tax systems.

Our research team set out to crack this puzzle. In our latest study, “Exploring the Gender Divide in Real Estate Ownership and Property Tax Compliance,” supported by the Global Tax Program, we dive into three key areas where gender and property taxes intersect: who owns what, who avoids paying, and how enforcement affects different groups. To tackle these questions, we focused on Tres de Febrero, a bustling urban municipality in Argentina—an ideal setting due to its comprehensive administrative tax records and a recent randomized enforcement campaign that gives us a natural experiment to work with.

A major roadblock in studying gender and property taxation is that ownership records rarely specify gender. But Argentina offered us an innovative solution: the country's tax ID system contains built-in sex markers. Working closely with local officials in Tres de Febrero to maintain confidentiality, we used this feature to map gender patterns across more than 100,000 properties annually, giving us an unprecedented view of property ownership through a gender lens.

Our investigation combined these ownership records with rich data spanning 2018 to 2020, including monthly tax bills, payment records, payments methods, and assessed property values. We also seized an opportunity in 2020 when the municipality sent tax reminders to 25,000 residents, enabling us to see how different groups responded to these nudges. Here’s what we found.
 

Key Findings

Who Owns What? Our first key finding reveals stark gender disparities in residential property ownership—particularly at the upper end of the property value distribution. Up to the 40th percentile of property values, ownership is evenly split among men, women, and co-owned properties. However, as property values increase, women’s ownership share declines significantly. In the top 1% of properties, women own less than 20%, while men own about 30%, with the remaining 50% co-owned. Similar patterns appear in other contexts, such as São Paulo, Brazil, where women’s ownership also declines sharply among the highest-valued properties. This fact raises important questions about wealth inequality and the broader economic barriers women may face. 

Are Men and Women Equally Tax-Compliant? Despite differences in ownership, tax compliance tells a different story. Men and women are equally likely to pay their property tax bills, with on-time payment rates increasing as property values rise—ranging from around 35% in the first percentile to 60% in the top percentile. However, women-owned properties face slightly higher effective tax rates due to a mildly regressive tax structure that disproportionately affects lower-value properties—where women’s ownership is more concentrated.

Do Tax Reminders Work Differently for Women and Men? Governments increasingly use communication tools—letters, emails, and text messages—to encourage tax compliance. We leveraged a large-scale field experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine gender differences in response to tax enforcement. The results? Men and women reacted similarly, with both being significantly more likely to pay their taxes after receiving a reminder—on average, increasing payment rates by 4.5 percentage points. Notably, while women respond similarly across all property value quintiles, men's responsiveness decreases slightly as property values rise. In the lowest quintile, personalized tax letters boosted timely payments of men by eight percentage points—twice the increase observed among women.

Why These Findings Matter

Policy Implications: Understanding these gender disparities is crucial for designing fairer tax systems. Policymakers need to consider the impact of regressive tax structures on women and explore ways to make property taxes more equitable. For example, the recent property tax reforms in Tres de Febrero, which replaced a regressive tax schedule with a progressive one, aim to reduce the disproportionate tax burden on women.

New Insights into Sex Disparities in Wealth and Tax Compliance: Our findings provide empirical evidence on gender differences in property ownership and tax compliance. This is particularly important because ownership records rarely specify gender, making it difficult to study these disparities. The innovative use of sex markers in Argentina's tax ID system allowed us to map gender patterns in property ownership.

Challenging Common Assumptions: While previous research suggests women tend to be more tax-compliant, our results indicate that for property taxes in Argentina, men and women behave similarly. This raises new questions about whether compliance patterns observed in lab studies hold up in real-world tax settings.
 

Conclusion

Our study provides valuable insights into sex disparities in property ownership and tax compliance, offering policymakers the evidence to design more equitable tax systems. As governments and practitioners gain greater access to administrative tax records and analytical tools, a growing opportunity exists to understand tax behavior better and create fairer, more inclusive tax systems.