[TimPC]

Suburbs are a money-loser for governments if you allocate income tax revenue at the location of the job. That isn't really a fair allocation though, as suburbs are part of the reason professionals take jobs in big cities. If you either average the income tax revenue between where someone lives and where someone works or put it entirely where someone lives suburbs easily pay for themselves.

[pyradius]

Alas there is no relationship between an income tax and personal consumption of spatial services. There is absolutely no coherent reason to do as you suggest, and every reason for the land to pay the cost of delivering those services, along with the rest of the rental value of land.

[TimPC]

I’m not suggesting altering the flow of tax money. I’m suggesting changing how it’s measured when you determine which communities are sources and sinks. It’s very superficial to say a city with a job generates 100% of the income tax from that job when the city doesn’t house the person and provides barely and services to that person or their family. If you measure things that way of course cities are the only tax sources. But it’s a bad way to measure things.

It’s more reasonable to measure where taxes are coming from by some combination of where people live and where they work. If you do this then suburbs are not tax sinks. This isn’t saying you change how you distribute tax revenue it’s only saying you change how you measure where it comes from.

[imtringued]

That's a recipe for corruption. If a politician receives no strings attached income taxes even if those are intended to be spent to improve location and pay for infrastructure, he is sure to spend them as if they have none of those strings attached.

[TimPC]

I never said to give the income tax to the suburbs. I said the model of whether or not suburbs are tax sources or tax sinks depends on how this is computed. People create models where cities that swell to double the size in the day generate all the tax revenue and every other community is a financial burden. This isn’t saying cities get all the money. I’m just saying how you measure tax generation has big impacts on which communities generate more taxes than they consume.