112 FOREST VALUATION 



Assuming again the local taxes to be seventy-five per cent of 

 total taxes these forests appear taxed at about seven cents per acre ; 

 or five dollars and sixty cents per thousand ; five and six-tenths of 

 net income, or three per cent of value of stumpage. 



6. The general tendency in forest taxation in Europe is 

 toward some form of income tax but it is doubtful if ground tax 

 and property tax will ever be entirely dispensed with. An important 

 and interesting fact is that forestry as a business is not only possi- 

 ble but thrives under a variety of methods of taxation and that in 

 the best forest districts, Wurttemberg, Saxony and Baden, the old- 

 est form of ground tax is still employed. 



This clearly proves that it is not so much a matter of method 

 of taxation as it is an understanding of forestry as a business and 

 a sense of justice which is needed, here, as in many other lines of 

 taxation. The application of some one simple method by one au- 

 thority, as is done today in the United States for farm property, 

 would certainly be preferable to the irregular variety of taxation, 

 in method, rate and authority of most European countries. 



e. Forest taxation in the United States. 



1. Forests are taxed in all states of the Union as real estate, 

 the timber and the land, or crop and land being taxed together. The 

 taxation is not uniform; in one county the forest may be assessed 

 low as wild land, in another the timber is carefully estimated and 

 its value added. Non-resident owners and therefore a large part of 

 the forest owners usually fare worse than residents of the township 

 or county. A common mistake is to assess stumpage which can not 

 possibly come into use for years, as if it were ready to cut at once. 

 For instance a lumber company has twenty years' supply of stump- 

 age ; its mill is the most important enterprise in the county, furnishes 

 opportunity for labor, market for produce and a supply of cheap 

 building material. Stumpage is worth six dollars per M. feet. At 

 a recent revision an effort was made to assess the twenty years sup- 

 ply at this rate. It was shown that by doing so with the prevailing 

 tax rate of three per cent, the taxes and interest would eat up the 

 value of a large part of this stumpage long before the timber could 

 be used at the mill. 



The complaint usually is that the present methods of taxation 

 force the owners to cut and thereby discourage the holding of for- 

 ests. 



2. In actual forestry practice, the present method of assessing 

 the stand at full sale value and taxing it at a rate of three per cent 

 would prove prohibitory. To illustrate: a plantation of white pine 



