EDITORIAL COMiMBNT 



From the "slap-dash" methods of determining tax assessments to 

 which we have become accustomed, the pendulum has swung to the 

 extremist other side in the Bureau of Internal Revenue in its question- 

 naire on the forest industries, worked out by the newly organized 

 Timber Section (headed by a forester). The questionnaire contains 

 not less than 289 questions, designed to enable the bureau to assess with 

 absolute justice income and excess profit taxes in proper relation to the 

 capital assets. How complicated this determination is for the so- 

 called "wasting industries" like lumbering, appears not only from this 

 array of questions but also from the efforts to make the questions 

 intelligible. Not only does the bureau place regional valuers in their 

 districts, who by various means are to elucidate the subjects to those 

 concerned, but the National Lumber Manufacturers' Association has 

 issued a 12-page type-written explanation of the questionnaire, pre- 

 pared by E. T. Allen, Forester of the Association, and expects to follow 

 it up with a full-sized primer. 



Bewildering as the amount of information to be worked out by the 

 individual concerns will be, what master mind will be able to compile 

 and utilize the vast amount of information ! We are afraid that after 

 all a process of simplification will have to be invented in this matter. 

 And might not tnis simplification eventually lie in the direction of 

 giving up the taxation of industries, and taxing individuals alone? 



We may add that there are no irrelevant questions asked, and that 

 Mr. Allen's explanations are most lucid. 



The American Paper and Pulp Association at a business conference 

 on November 14 accepted a report of its committee on Forest Conser- 

 vation with suggestions for a national forest, policy. It takes the 

 position that there is "no basis for any legal compulsion upon the 

 private landowner to keep his land forested except in cases where after 

 proper classification and indemnification it may be decided that the 

 general welfare demands watershed protection," but it admits that 

 the private owner "is under both moral and legal obligation to handle 

 his proj)erty in such a way that it does not become a public menace and 

 the Stale may require him to conduct his cutting operations in such 



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