270 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



CHARACTER OF TIMBER CUTTING PRACTICES ON LARGE PRIVATE HOLDINGS IN THE NORTH. 

 DATA ARE BASED ON REAPPRAISAL OF THE FOREST SITUATION, 1946 



Acreage in properties being 

 cut under practices that 



Ownership class 



Land owned Good Fair Poor 



Acres 



Percent Percent Percent 



Family and investment 



Pulp companies 



Lumber, veneer, and cooperage companies 



Mining companies (coal) 



Mining companies (iron) 



Other.. 



Total 14, 685, 681 



62 



29 



Few assessors make any attempt to 

 adjust the assessment with changes in 

 soil productivity or changes in the de- 

 gree of timber stocking. These two 

 differences alone determine whether a 

 property can return income. In all or- 

 ganized towns of Maine, property taxes 

 on forest land are considered to be so 

 high as to preclude large timber hold- 

 ings. Consequently, few of the large 

 timberland holders own any appreci- 

 able acreage in the organized towns. 



Several States, among them Minne- 

 sota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New 

 York, have adopted forest-crop laws 

 that enable the landowner to defer the 

 major part of his current tax and to 

 pay the rest by yield tax when the tim- 

 ber is harvested. The total land area 

 in the North under such classification 

 probably does not exceed a million 

 acres. In New York, only two large 

 properties, the Luther property and 

 the Fisher property, are under the 

 yield-tax law. The Goodman property 

 is a large one in Wisconsin under such 

 a law. The fact that these laws have 

 not been more widely used is an in- 

 dication that many owners do not find 

 the forest property tax too burdensome. 

 The laws may act as a deterrent to ex- 

 cessive valuation by assessment officers. 



The inheritance tax is a handicap 

 to individual owners, especially when 

 most of their capital is tied up in the 

 standing timber on their land. When 

 a private-forest owner builds up a val- 



uable sustained-yield property, he nat- 

 urally would like to have the property 

 continued and would like his heirs to 

 enjoy the benefits from it. An inherit- 

 ance tax, which must be met in a single 

 payment, can wreck such holdings. 

 Distributing the period over which 

 such payments may be made to 10 

 years or longer would enable a large 

 number of such properties to be main- 

 tained. State and Federal Govern- 

 ments might well give consideration 

 as to how this particular problem can 

 be met. 



The Federal income-tax law defi- 

 nitely favors the forest owner by mak- 

 ing it possible for him to list timber 

 harvested as a long-term capital gain. 

 In this way his tax on timber growth 

 need never exceed 25 percent however 

 high his tax may be on current income. 

 Few timberland owners appear to ap- 

 preciate the investment opportunities 

 such a tax law affords. 



Another handicap is the relative lack 

 of skilled woods workers, particularly 

 workmen who will cut conservatively. 

 Operators have sometimes been ob- 

 liged to abandon conservative cutting 

 methods because the wood choppers 

 refused to cut trees on a selective basis. 

 Cutters have refused to cut selectively 

 (even though their own income on a 

 piece-work basis would be higher if 

 they did so) until they were given con- 

 vincing demonstrations. Intensive 

 training is needed to increase the 



