Master’s thesis: How to tax housing? Property versus rental taxation

This page is dedicated to my Master’s thesis, written during the Spring 2025 semester, under the supervision of Prof. Antoine Ferey (Sciences Po). Its title: “How to tax housing? Property versus rental taxation”. It has been selected as one of the Best Master’s Thesis for the year 2024-2025 (the selection can be found here).

In this essay I look at the differential welfare impact of two forms of housing taxation: property and rental income taxes. I first derive a fully theoretical, static, model to characterize the welfare implications of budget-neutral reforms. I then develop a tractable model, that can be numerically simulated, to derive optimal tax rates, under different specifications. Crucially, the optimal tax mix depends on the pass-through of the rental tax burden from the landlords to their tenants, determining the effective tax incidence. You can find it here