120 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



March 



damage from careless and malicious 

 sojourners. 



HOW FORESTS ARE TAXED. 



Under the common practice of in- 

 trusting to local officers the levying 

 of taxes upon real estate, forests are 

 assessed, almost without exception, 

 on the basis of agricultural land ; that 

 is, the land is estimated to have a cer- 

 tain value if cleared, and the standing 

 timber is worth so much more, or is 

 viewed as an encumbrance. The 

 latter case is by no means rare in hard- 

 wood sections. In many instances, 

 perhaps in most, the assessment is fair 

 so far as the value of the property is 

 concerned. In many others it is far 

 too high, because the land is not fit for 

 farming and therefore valueless ex- 

 cept to grow trees. At the same time, 

 the timber often has only a potential 

 value, since it can not be marketed for 

 want of roads or some other temporary 

 unreadiness. The argument is entirely 

 apart from the admitted inability of 

 many of the assessors to truly value 

 woodlands, and who therefore resort 

 to guessing, and from the quite 

 general belief that in cases where the 

 owner is a corporation or a nonresi- 

 dent with no local interests, the prop- 

 erty may be taxed to the limit. These 

 things are not to be avoided under 

 any system. In short, whether the 

 assessment be made fairly or unfair- 

 ly, the forest is considered a form of 

 property which should be realized on 

 at the earliest possible moment, and 

 the more it can be made to yield to the 

 county prior to its extinction the better 

 for the county. 



( )ne can easily understand the temp- 

 tation that confronts the assessors in 

 regions where everything is wanted 

 roads, schools, public buildings to 

 use the taxing power for present ad- 

 vantage, yet instances are plenty of 

 communities established on the re- 



turns from forest property and utterly 

 abandoned as soon as the original 

 timber was all cut. The few farms 

 that had been taken could not keep 

 up the roads and other public works. 



But the wisdom or unwisdom of 

 raising a revenue once for all upon 

 forests is only a part of the question. 

 True forest land is not farm land un- 

 cleared, and a forest is not the crop of 

 a season. The problem concerns 

 itself chiefly with those areas which. 

 in their nature are fit only for tree 

 growth, and with a crop representing 

 the accumulated investment of the 

 owner for as many years as were re- 

 quired to bring the trees to maturity. 

 I f a man buy a mature forest, he 

 acquires the investment of another ; if 

 he plants, or waits for a natural one to 

 grow, he srets no return for mam 

 vears. In either case, his forest serves 

 the public by providing a common 

 necessity wood and by the benefi- 

 cent influences that it gives freely. 



These considerations make it ap- 

 parent that forests occupy, or should 

 occupy, a separate place on the tax 

 list ; that they need to be treated differ- 

 ently from farms and town lots and 

 mines. In fact it will be necessary to 

 show that growing trees should be 

 considered personal property, not real 

 estate, as the are now by practice or 

 law in virtually every State of the 

 Union, * 



RATES OF TAXATION. 



Without going deeply into details, a 

 few instances may be given to show 

 how the present methods tend to rid 

 the forest owner of all but a tem- 

 porary interest in his property, and. 

 instead of encouraging the practice of 

 forestry and the maintenance of the 

 forests, put a premium on destructive 

 lumbering. 



A competent authority says that "in 

 Wisconsin the taxes on forest property 



*The language of the statute of Massachusetts is: "Real estate, for tha purpose of 

 taxation, shall include all lands within the State and all building and other things 

 erected on or affixed to the same." The statute of New York declares, "The term land 

 shall be construed to include the land itself, all buildings, structures, substructures erected 

 upon under or above, or affixed to the same; all wharfs and piers * * * all trees and 

 underwood growing upon land; * * *." 



