(;5.) JUURXAL OF I'ORKSTRV 



increase in values. It assumes that the yearly tax collected from an 

 assessment of $3.50 per acre does not levy all the tax the property 

 should pay. The assumption is pure guess work. There is no 

 science in it. Some soils of low producing power and inaccessibly 

 situated cannot stand such a tax, while other soils can pay infinitely 

 more. For example, take Vermont's "wild-land" law, which permits 

 of the classification of timberlands and provides for no increase in 

 assessed value until 1950, and which provides for a harvest tax when 

 the timber is cut. Take also the lands of a well-known timber-holding 

 company whose average quality cut-over lands are now assessed at 

 $6.35 per acre. The tax on this flat appraisal alone, were such lands 

 classified (some of them are), would amount in TO years, based on 

 present-day stumpage, to a sum greater than the value of the timber 

 crop to be grown ! And yet the harvest tax theory assumes that some- 

 thing has been held back in the form of taxes, and that a considerable 

 fractional part of the stumpage value must be surrendered ! Half a 

 dozen States have tried to correct the evils of the property tax system 

 of taxation in some such manner and the attempt has failed, for such 

 laws are fallacious, inquisitive, provocative, and require special tax 

 machinery to execute their provisions. Therefore, it is time to quit 

 dodging the issue and to undertake tax reform in a manner and on a 

 basis which squares with the tenets of taxation and with all other 

 known requirements of a good law. 



This can be done. To do so, keep in mind the fundamentals 

 enumerated above, as well as the proposed soil productivity axiom, and 

 a way out of the dilemma in which forest taxation finds itself can be 

 found through two property taxes, one assessed against the land on a 

 soil productivity appraisal and the other against mature timber on a 

 sale value appraisal. So simple a system sounds too good to be true. 

 But it is true to the core, and withstands every test. Of the two prop- 

 erty taxes levied, the first — a land tax — is the principal tax when the 

 owner is guarding the public interest to the extent and in the manner 

 the public has a right to demand. When he is not so guarding the 

 public interest he is either holding land in a non-productive condition 

 to his own detriment or he is holding back from the market certain 

 stands of timber ready to be cut, in which case the second property 

 tax also will be levied, namely, a property tax against mature timber. 



Let these property taxes, a land tax and a mature timber tax, be 

 outlined individually in the reverse order. 



