Objective/Context:

This article addresses problems with property tax collection that reflect mechanisms of inequality and generate social effects in conflict-affected contexts.

Methodology:

We focus on the municipalities of Turbo and El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia, characterized by a weak structure of rural property rights, dispossession, and violence. Using a thorough and inductive approach, we analyzed tax statutes, and documentary sources and conducted semi-structured interviews with key actors to elucidate the proposed problems.

Conclusions:

In none of the cases was there a tendency towards a progressive increase in tax collection, which is explained, among other factors, by the outdated land registry and the weaknesses of the collection system. We found that powerful local political and economic actors were able to use the updated collection designs in a way that best suited them to avoid tax increases.

Originality:

We bring contributions from the political economy approach to enrich the institutional analysis of the mechanisms that hinder tax collection and show how they can become more complex in contexts of violence and generate three types of effects: the Mateo effect in which powerful local actors do not pay the updated values; the entropy effect in which the weakest can lose part of their property rights in areas affected by war; and the stress effect that shows the institutional friction between the agencies in charge of rates, cadastral updating, and collection.