112 URUGUAY - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IX GENERAL 



Table I. — Increase in the Value of Landed Property. 



Value of Landed 

 Year Property 



I9O4-I905 % 195,706,770 



I905-I906 391,413,540 



I906-I907 471,771,905 



I9O7-I908 552,130,270 



I90S-I9O9 632,488,635 



I909-I9IO 712,847,000 



1913-1914 1,069,270,500 



I9I4-I915 855,416,400 



It is evident that in face of such an increase in the value of property 

 it would be foolish to fix the tax according to the returns received by a 

 landowner who does not cultivate his fields himself, but who lets them in 

 order that they may be made productive. 



c) The Product oi the Tax and its Application. 



The agrarian policy of the government of Uruguay' aims steadih' at 

 the development of agriculture and breeding, the country's chief resources. 

 We will not examine in detail the many measures which are proof of this 

 constant preoccupation, but will merely note in passing that it devotes one 

 million pesos a year to guaranteeing the railways which are of interest 

 to rural districts, and has devoted about a million more to rural roads and 

 bridges, and that it spends considerable sums annually on the sanitary 

 inspection of animals, agricultural defence and such objects. In fact all 

 forms of agricultural activity are encouraged and scientificalh' developed 

 in the public interest of the country. 



This policy is from the strictly fiscal point of view the only logical one, 

 as is clear when the receipts of the treasury from rural property and 

 urban property, respectively, are considered. The purely conventional 

 taxable value of rural propertj^ which was respected under the system of 

 districts, was 8370,593,445 and this at 6 ^ per thousand 3-ielded §2,408,857, 

 as against 8406,555 which was the effective value of urban and suburban 

 propertj' and yielded a tax of $ 321,143. But the new census makes the 

 difference much more considerable for it raises the taxable value (that is 

 the amount of the capital value less 20 per cent.) of rural property to 

 3 712,000,000, which sum gives, when ijt is rendered liable to the 4 V^ 

 per thousand tax, an annual yield of § 3,204,000, that is ten times the 

 sum furnished by urban property which subsists unchanged. 



The importance to the government of a progressive increase in the capital 

 formed b}' rural propert}' is thus seen, and the fact that y^ P^^ thousand out 

 of the 4 ^2 P^r thousand tax will be paid into a special fund for roads and 

 communications will not fail to contribute to this imoortance. The ne- 



