A FOREST POLICY FOR CALIFORNIA 429 



is believed that taxes are not at present too high with relation to the 

 taxes on other forms of property, nor too high as compared with 

 other States, for California taxes on timber are lower than in any 

 other of the important timber States of the West — not much lower 

 than in the Douglas fir region, but a good deal lower than in the Inland 

 Empire. It is believed that tax reform might well take sornewhat the 

 following form : The State forester, upon the request of owners who 

 wish to take advantage of the reform, should classify the land as to 

 its value, if any, for forest uses. In connection with young growth 

 on cut-over lands or resulting from plantations there should be an 

 annual tax of, say, 10 per cent of the value of the net increment on 

 the land. For instance, if 150 board feet is the average annual product, 

 with stumpage worth $"^ a thousand, the annual tax under this ar- 

 rangement would then be 3 cents per acre. There should also be a 

 final yield tax of, say, 10 per cent of the value of the stumpage at the 

 time it is cut. In the case of mature timber there should be a land 

 tax such as used for the young timber, and in addition there should 

 be, it is believed, a yield tax of about 15 per cent of the value of the 

 stumpage when it is cut. This percentage is placed higher than in the 

 case of young timber because man has contributed much less to the 

 value of timber now mature than he will have contributed to the 

 value of timber which he grows from young trees to maturity. In 

 order to adjust the income properly between counties which now are 

 cutting relatively little timber and those which are now cutting a 

 great deal, the State should act as banker, collecting all of the taxes 

 on the classified land and paying over to each county the amount that 

 it received f*rom such land in the year previous to the year of the 

 classification. When the land is cut over it would change automatically 

 from the mature to the young growth class. If the taxes received by 

 the State fail to make up the amount due the counties, as would be 

 the case at the beginning, since with all privately owned land included 

 it is estimated that the collections would amount to about $600,000 out 

 of the present tax of about a million dollars, then the State should 

 make good the difference not by bonding, but through taxes collected 

 currently, making up this loss later on after increased cutting and 

 increased value of stumpage had increased the amount of taxes above 

 a million dollars. The owners of both classes of forest land should 

 be required to protect it and also to apply some rather rough silvi- 

 cultural methods in connection with cutting to secure reproduction. As 

 one feature of the plan to acquire State forests, taxes on classified 



