Final Report: Legislative Property Tax Study Committee, January 2009

The Committee was authorized to meet three days during the 2007 Legislative Interim and two days during the 2008 Legislative Interim. The Committee met on September 12, 2007; November 7, 2007; December 5, 2007; November 14, 2008; and January 7, 2009, at the State Capitol, Des Moines, Iowa. In 2008, the Committee retained consultants from the Institute for Public Policy at George Washington University to study property taxation and other forms of revenue generation used by local governments in Iowa and other states.

Property Valuation Report, 2007

Iowa law requires every city and county assessor to submit to the Iowa Department of Revenue an annual Abstract of Assessment reflecting assessed values of real property. The Iowa Department of Revenue has received and reviewed each 2007 Abstract of Assessment and summarized the valuation data. The values reported on the Abstracts of Assessment are one hundred percent (100%) of the actual value of property as established by the assessors and approved by local boards of review.

Property Valuation Report, 2008

Iowa law requires every city and county assessor to submit to the Iowa Department of Revenue an annual Abstract of Assessment reflecting assessed values of real property. The Iowa Department of Revenue has received and reviewed each 2008 Abstract of Assessment and summarized the valuation data. The values reported on the Abstracts of Assessment are one hundred percent (100%) of the actual value of property as established by the assessors and approved by local boards of review.

Property Valuation Report, 2009

Iowa law requires every city and county assessor to submit to the Iowa Department of Revenue an annual Abstract of Assessment reflecting assessed values of real property. The Iowa Department of Revenue has received and reviewed each 2009 Abstract of Assessment and summarized the valuation data. The values reported on the Abstracts of Assessment are one hundred percent (100%) of the actual value of property as established by the assessors and approved by local boards of review.

Tax Exempt Property Report, 2008

Iowa law requires each assessor in the state to value tax exempt property within his or her jurisdiction, and report such values to the Director of Revenue each year. The following report lists the 2009 actual valuations of tax exempt property for the following types of property: religious institutions, literary societies and educational institutions, low rent housing, associations of war veterans, charitable and benevolent societies, libraries and art galleries, dwelling unit property, homes for soldiers, and racetracks. Also presented in this report are comparative 2008 exempt property values.

Tax Exempt Property Report, 2009

Iowa law requires each assessor in the state to value tax exempt property within his or her jurisdiction, and report such values to the Director of Revenue each year. The following report lists the 2009 actual valuations of tax exempt property for the following types of property: religious institutions, literary societies and educational institutions, low rent housing, associations of war veterans, charitable and benevolent societies, libraries and art galleries, dwelling unit property, homes for soldiers, and racetracks. Also presented in this report are comparative 2008 exempt property values.

Tax Exempt Property Report, 2010

Iowa law requires each assessor in the state to value tax exempt property within his or her jurisdiction, and report such values to the Director of Revenue each year. The following report lists the 2009 actual valuations of tax exempt property for the following types of property: religious institutions, literary societies and educational institutions, low rent housing, associations of war veterans, charitable and benevolent societies, libraries and art galleries, dwelling unit property, homes for soldiers, and racetracks. Also presented in this report are comparative 2008 exempt property values.

An economic analysis of unilateral refusals to license intellectual property

The intellectual property laws in the United States provide the owners of intellectual property with discretion to license the right to use that property or to make or sell products that embody the intellectual property. However, the antitrust laws constrain the use of property, including intellectual property, by a firm with market power and may place limitations on the licensing of intellectual property. This paper focuses on one aspect of antitrust law, the so-called “essential facilities doctrine,” which may impose a duty upon firms controlling an “essential facility” to make that facility available to their rivals. In the intellectual property context, an obligation to make property available is equivalent to a requirement for compulsory licensing. Compulsory licensing may embrace the requirement that the owner of software permit access to the underlying code so that others can develop compatible application programs. Compulsory licensing may undermine incentives for research and development by reducing the value of an innovation to the inventor. This paper shows that compulsory licensing also may reduce economic efficiency in the short run by facilitating the entry of inefficient producers and by promoting licensing arrangements that result in higher prices.

À la recherche d'une définition de la destination de l'immeuble en copropriété divise au Québec

Le droit de propriété, théoriquement absolu, est restreint dans le cadre de la copropriété divise étant donné le contexte individuel et collectif dans lequel il s’exerce. En fait, l’intérêt collectif peut lui imposer des restrictions, mais à certaines conditions. L’une d’entre elles, essentielle, est le respect de la destination de l’immeuble. Or, la notion de destination de l'immeuble ne fait l'objet d'aucune disposition législative permettant de la définir. Afin de préciser cette notion, deux conceptions ont été développées. La première est à l’effet qu’on doit tenir compte, dans la recherche de la destination de l'immeuble, de ses caractères et de sa situation. La deuxième prévoit plutôt qu'il faut distinguer ces trois éléments. Même si la première thèse est majoritairement admise en jurisprudence, nous croyons que les tribunaux interprètent trop largement cette notion, qui devrait être mieux circonscrite. Après une revue de la littérature et une analyse jurisprudentielle, nous développerons notre propre conception de la notion de destination, qui sera une voie mitoyenne entre les deux conceptions établies, et proposerons des améliorations quant à la rédaction de cette clause dans la déclaration de copropriété.

The relationship between European Community agricultural Structural Policies and their implementation and agricultural succession and inheritance within Member States

This paper presents an overview of the European Union involvement in agricultural restructuring. By way of introduction it looks at the processes of farm replication operating in Europe and the forces behind them. It then considers the wider application of EU measures in each Member State and how they interrelate with the national property laws and social customs. In conclusion the paper appraises the restructuring policies by examining the balance between legitimising the concentration of property rights amongst a minority and the fragmentation of estates between the majority.

La escasez impuesta : el software libre y el status económico de los bienes inmateriales

Ante el despliegue de posibilidades para crear, reproducir y compartir contenidos que la informática proporciona, surgieron incesantes debates sobre su estatuto económico. Las leyes de propiedad intelectual promulgan medidas cada vez más restrictivas para consumidores y productores, lo que erige barreras a la cultura y favorece monopolios sobredimensionados. Frente a esta situación emergen voces disidentes como el movimiento del software libre. En este artículo, haremos un análisis del debate de los bienes inmateriales, el papel de las leyes de propiedad intelectual y las reivindicaciones del los partidarios del software libre.

Licensing patterns for Linked Data

Rights expression languages declare the permitted and prohibited actions to be performed on a resource. Along this work, six rights expression languages are compared, abstracting their commonalities and outlining their underlying pattern. Linked Data, which can be object of protection by the intellectual property laws or its access be restricted by an access control system, can be the asset in rights expressions. The requirements for a pattern for licensing Linked Data resources are listed.

Law and Foreign Direct Investment. IES WORKING PAPER 4/2011

In this paper we examine the effect of law on foreign direct investment outflows with a specific interest in the relationship between international investment law and domestic private property laws. Our results indicate that FDI investor is indifferent to host country property rights, hence shareholder protection by law is not a significant determinant of FDI outflows. We argue that FDI, in contrast with other types of capital flows, can effectively mitigate the agency problem through majority ownership and control, hence reduce exposure to ex-post expropriation by the affiliate. On the other hand, FDI investor remains exposed to risk of expropriation by the host government and is strongly sensitive to the enforcement of law in the host country. In contrast with recent literature we conclude that there are no causal relationship between bilateral investment treaties and FDI.

On the group-velocity property for wave-activity conservation laws

The density and the flux of wave-activity conservation laws are generally required to satisfy the group-velocity property: under the WKB approximation (i.e., for nearly monochromatic small-amplitude waves in a slowly varying medium), the flux divided by the density equals the group velocity. It is shown that this property is automatically satisfied if, under the WKB approximation, the only source of rapid variations in the density and the flux lies in the wave phase. A particular form of the density, based on a self-adjoint operator, is proposed as a systematic choice for a density verifying this condition.