In economic policy, trust is not measured with surveys, but with income. Each peso entering the treasury is a silent declaration of certainty in the direction and promise of return. If investment is the pulse of the market, collection is the pulse of the government.
And in Mexico City, that pulse at the end of the third quarter of 2025 recorded total revenue with a growth of 8 percent compared to the previous year.
More than an accounting figure, this increase expresses a form of political stability translated into economic behavior. The head of the Secretariat of Administration and Finance, Juan Pablo de Botton Falcón, warned this when appearing before the capital’s Congress: income grows not only due to institutional efficiency, but because citizens trust that their taxes are well managed.
The merit lies not only in the fiscal policies—which include incentives for advance payment with more than 2.5 million beneficiaries between property and tenure—but in the type of symbolic relationship that the capital government, headed by Clara Brugada, builds with the taxpayers.
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Economic theory has explained this relationship with different approaches. One of the most influential is that of “fiscal capacity”, developed by the German economist Richard Musgrave and expanded by the American Joseph Stiglitz, according to which collection depends on both the tax structure and the legitimacy of the State. In other words: the willingness to pay taxes grows when the citizen perceives that public spending generates well-being and is not diluted in opacity.
In practice, this means that the residents of the capital are seeing concrete results. Mexico City has sustained investments in infrastructure, mobility, security and social programs that strengthen the urban and social fabric. This tangibility turns taxation into a virtuous circle: you pay more because you trust, and you trust because you see the return of the payment.
From a behavioral point of view, fundraising is also a collective narrative. The “fiscal contract” between the State and the taxpayer is consolidated when there is reciprocity: citizens do not flee from the treasury if they perceive that the system is fair. This reciprocity translates into data such as an increase in early compliance and a decrease in tax delinquency in the capital.
In the end, collecting is governing, and the health of public finances is not measured in pesos, but in trust.
About the author:
Salvador Guerrero Chiprés is General Coordinator of the Command, Control, Computing, Communications and Citizen Contact Center (C5) of Mexico City.
www.c5.cdmx.gob.mx
The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and editorial line of Forbes Mexico.
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