Determinant Factors and Spatial Patterns of the Local Tax Collection Rates in a Metropolitan Area: Focusing on Relations with Poverty

Abstract

As a result of analyzing the collection rate of local taxes and the financial situation in the basic municipalities in a metropolitan area, it is clear that the finances of local governments in the metropolitan area are susceptible to economic fluctuations and the impact of the delinquency of local taxes. Therefore, this paper quantitatively analyzes the collection rate of local taxes and the index related to the issues of poverty, and examines the determinant factors and spatial patterns. The study area was the Tokyo metropolitan area, which includes Tokyo Metropolis and three prefectures, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa (excluding special wards in Tokyo). The findings are summarized as follows.

1) Local governments with low local tax collection rates have a significant relationship with indicators related to the issue of poverty such as average annual income and unemployment rate, which have an explanatory power of about 60%. Therefore, areas with low collection rates have appeared in a sectoral form corresponding to the knowledge of social status in urban spatial structure.

2) Through analysis of local Moran statistics, cool spot areas with significantly low collection rates were detected in spatial continuity. In addition, geographically weighted regression analysis suggested that there are regional differences in the factors that determine the collection rate.