112 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



PRODUCTIVE FORESTS WIDEN THE TAX BASE 



It is obvious that under the general property tax system there will 

 be more property to tax with productive forests than with idle land, 

 and that this will tend to result in lower tax burdens on all property 

 within the same taxing unit. This additional property will include not 

 merely the forests themselves, if they are privately owned, but also the 

 sawmills, pulp and paper mills, and other plants dependent on the 

 forest for raw material. It will include the homes and other property 

 of persons employed in the forest-products industries, and the homes 

 and businesses of persons who serve the forest-industry population. 

 It will include the summer homes, resorts, and other recreation facili- 

 ties that exist because of the forest. It will include the farms and 

 villages whose existence depends on the forest. In the West it may 

 include immense agricultural values that depend on the water from 

 forest lands. These dependent values may, and often do, considera- 

 bly exceed the values of the forests themselves. 



In Wisconsin, for instance, the value of the pulp and paper plants 

 is around $100,000,000. The wood for these plants could be supplied 

 by about 2 million acres of managed forest which at present valuations 

 would probably be worth not more than $50,000,000. In Grays 

 Harbor County, Wash., forests and cut-over land are assessed at 

 around $12,000,000 and lumber and woodworking plants at nearly 

 $8,000,000. Of the remaining property, assessed at $18,000,000, at 

 least 90 percent owes its value to the existence of the forest industries. 

 Even the farms, now worth $1,000,000, would lose much of their value 

 if the forest industries should close down permanently. 



In cases like these, even if the forests themselves were entirely 

 exempt from taxation they would indirectly return much greater 

 revenues to the public treasury than would the same area of idle land. 

 The same thing would be true if taxes were based partly or wholly 

 upon incomes, instead of property. All of the varied industries and 

 businesses sustained by productive forests are capable of yielding 

 incomes, but idle land produces none. 



Public acquisition of privately owned forest land is sometimes 

 objected to on the ground that its removal from the tax rolls will 

 reduce the public revenues. This might be a valid argument against 

 public ownership if private owners could and would use the land in 

 such a productive manner as to derive an income much larger than 

 public agencies might derive from managing the same land. This 

 will seldom be the case. In the long run, the tax collected by the 

 public must be somewhat less than the net income from the land, or 

 else private owners will not continue to hold it. With public owner- 

 ship the public gets the entire net income. 



Even where there is no direct income from a forest, the public may 

 still derive a large indirect income. An extreme example is the 

 Angeles National Forest in southern California. This forest is main- 

 tained primarily for watershed protection and not for timber produc- 

 tion. It returns very little direct income, hence impairment of its 

 protective value would not directly affect the income to the public 

 treasury. However, the possibility of agricultural use of some 

 200,000 acres of exceedingly valuable land depends on the water from 

 the Angeles Forest. It has been estimated that the Federal Govern- 

 ment alone derives approximately $200,000 a year from taxes on in- 



