This paper investigates the linkages among revenues from these taxes, female property ownership, and gender-based discounts on property-related taxes. Sections 1.2 and 1.3 explore trends in female property ownership and property rights in India, and Section 2 reviews the existing literature on the benefits of female property ownership and tax incentives. An understanding of the legal framework behind levying stamp duty and recurrent (annual) property tax emerged through a review of the stamp and municipal acts of 28 states and Delhi (see Appendix 2 for a summary of the results), and the property tax rules of 20 of the largest cities in the country were reviewed. Provisions pertaining to discounts in tax payments and other benefits provided to female property owners are provided in Section 3.

Section 4 presents the study’s main research objectives and details on the methodology used. Following the legal review, eight cities with different discounts for stamp duties and property taxes were shortlisted, and a methodology was designed for collecting insights from focus group discussions (FGDs) with male and female property owners and taxpayers and one-to-one interviews with government officials in state revenue and land administration departments and ULB property tax administration departments (see Section 5). FGDs were conducted with female and male property owners from six of the eight cities short-listed. Due to differences in the legal review findings and the on-the-ground realities of implementing discounts, as well as difficulties reaching relevant government officials in some cities, interviews took place in ten cities, including four in which FGDs were also conducted. Where possible, gender-disaggregated home ownership figures were also obtained from government departments. Finally, Section 6 provides the main conclusions from the research and the policy implications these suggest.

# 1.2 Female property ownership in India

Various researchers report that gender-disaggregated data on property ownership in India is either not publicly available or not collected (Agarwal, Anthwal, and Mahesh 2020; Lahoti and Swaminathan 2016). This complicates an assessment of the level of property ownership among females. An extraction and analysis of raw data on home ownership from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2015–16)<sup>5</sup> shows that levels of home ownership overall are high across several states; see Table 1. (NFHS defines women property ownership as follows: Women owning a house and/or land, alone or jointly with others.) The proportions of female ownership are considerably lower, however, suggesting most homes are owned solely by males. Swaminathan (2016), using India Human Development Survey II (IHDS, 2011–12) data, reports that female land ownership in India constitutes about 3.9 percent of total land ownership, and female house ownership constitutes about 6.5 percent of total house ownership.

Table 1 shows that outright female ownership makes up only 13.98 percent of ownership in India as a whole, though this varies by state; in Delhi, for example, it is 24.5 percent. Table 1 also shows that when females own homes, they mostly own them outright, rather than jointly with others. For instance, in the

> 5. Raw data for the 2019–20 NFHS round has not yet been released.

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