How to use this map

This map displays the per capita tax base in each general purpose local government (city, town, county, etc.) in the United States: the total taxable resources that exist in the jurisdiction, divided by the population.

In the default view, jurisdictions are colored based on their fiscal capacity ratio (FCR): their tax base as a fraction of the average for their metropolitan area (metropolitan area boundaries are shown with dark black lines). By normalizing at the metro level, this view highlights within-metro inequality, controlling for the substantial variation in average property values between different regions of the country.

This view is most useful for comparing jurisdictions within the same metropolitan area—not comparing different regions of the country. We recommend searching (using the bar in the top left) or zooming to a city or town that you know well, or are curious about, and seeing how it compares to neighboring jurisdictions. For example, we can zoom to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area:

Map showing fiscal capacity ratios across Los Angeles County, with color-coded regions indicating varying levels of fiscal capacity. Municipalities like Malibu, Newport Beach, and Beverly Hills have much higher tax bases than the metropolitan average

Looking at Los Angeles, we can see that some jurisdictions—Malibu, Newport Beach, Palos Verdes Estates—are shaded in dark blue, indicating that they have fiscal capacity ratios greater than 300%: their per capita tax bases are more than three times the metropolitan average for Los Angeles. We label jurisdictions like these “municipal tax havens” for the way they shield property wealth from taxation. Other areas—most notably municipalities to the south and east of LA proper, as well as the Antelope Valley—have fiscal capacity ratios that are much lower, between 33% and 66%.

Clicking on a jurisdiction will bring up a popup window with its detailed information: its name, its state and metropolitan area, and its exact population, taxable value per capita, and fiscal capacity ratio. For instance, if we click on Beverly Hills we can see that it has a tax base of $1,080, 811 per capita, more than six times the average for Los Angeles overall (FCR = 6.63):

Map of Los Angeles County highlighting Beverly Hills, California, with jurisdiction details for Beverly Hills city including population, fiscal capacity ratio, and taxable value per capita.

For some purposes (particularly for comparisons between different regions of the country) it may be useful to display the raw taxable value per capita. This can be shown by clicking the layer list button in the top right of the map (just under the legend), selecting “Taxable value per capita”, and unselecting “Fiscal Capacity Ratio”. If we do this for LA, we can see that even many of the places that are poorer than average for LA still have more than $100,000 of tax base per capita—more than the metro-wide average in many parts of the South and Midwest:

Map of Los Angeles County, California, showing taxable value per capita with different shades of blue indicating various ranges. The map includes notable places such as Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Long Beach, and Beverly Hills.

Learn more about our analysis by reading the academic paper, or download the data here.