NOTES. 465 



roads, this is often not possible or financially practicable. 

 Hence, areas distant from market may contain large supplies of 

 timber of no value on account of their inaccessibility, and no 

 fine finance calculation is practicable. Under such conditions, 

 when not even crude exploitation pays, forest management 

 upon financial basis is surely excluded. Such properties in- 

 capable of earning a rent must by necessity be looked upon 

 differently from those near markets. While on the latter it 

 may be possible to institute a sustained yield management, 

 the former may only be carefully exploited without too much 

 waste and some attention to aftergrowth. 



NOTES TO CHAPTER IX. 



P. 251. Taxation based on Productivity. — In Germany 

 no attempt is made to induce private owners to conservative 

 forest management by reduction of taxes. Forest property is 

 taxed like all other property upon its properly ascertained 

 value, which, however, varies in diflferent states. There is a 

 soil tax {grnndsteuer), an income tax, and a property tax. 



The soil tax is determined upon the premise of a sustained 

 yield management and the basis of productive capacity under 

 such management — " not to be gauged according to accidental 

 expenditures or improvements or neglects, but according to a 

 natural management under usual and generally practised dili- 

 gence." The yield is determined upon the basis of the usually 

 applied rotation with the species and kind of management. 

 But it is the yield which can be secured under these circum- 

 stances, not the yield which is actually secured, upon which the 

 tax is based, so that the good manager who can secure a yield 

 higher than the ordinary one is benefited, the poor manager 

 who allows his forest to deteriorate is punished. Moreover, 

 since, as we have seen, wood prices and net yields improve, 

 the older tax valuations favor the owner. 



Since the forest owner not only possesses the soil, but in 

 a regulated forest management also the accumulated growing 



2H 



