Factors influencing the structure of municipal taxation. Special reference to political corruption

There are few studies that relate tax revenues to corruption at the municipal level due to their great complexity and the difficulty in obtaining data. Continuing the research we started years ago, the main objective of this article is to analyse whether municipal political corruption influences some or all tax revenues. A panel database of all Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants is compiled for the period 2002–2013. The most outstanding result is that municipalities with cases of corruption obtained higher revenues in construction-related taxes than those where there have been no political corruption cases, which shows the close relationship between this sector of economic activity and political corruption.