FIFTH NATI0NAI< CONSERVATION CONGRESS 135 



A possible superficial criticism may be that, leaving the land out of consider- 

 ation, the proposed yield tax at a property valuation of the crop means that but 

 one year's tax is to be paid upon the timber, while a house, for example, is taxed 

 annually. The fallacy of this, however, will be seen when it is remembered that 

 unlike a house, which affords revenue annually, it is a crop produced from nothing 

 by the owner since his acquisition of the land and while he was paying taxes upon 

 his land upon its value for productive purposes throughout the entire period 

 just as any other crop grower does, and affording revenue only when cut. He is 

 taxed on this and must still pay upon any wealth into which he converts it. It is 

 not unearned speculative increment. To tax it annually is exactly equivalent to 

 taxing an agricultural crop 50 times during its growing period. We have seen 

 elsewhere that justice does not require taxing a crop at all. The proposed plan, 

 therefore, errs on the opposite side in favor of the State, for it does tax the annual 

 production fully, although not until the crop is produced, for taxing its full value 

 when grown is the same as taxing each year the increment added since the 

 preceding year. If it is worth $150 an acre, after 50 years from seed, a 3 per 

 cent yield tax would be $4.50. Each year since the first must have produced a 

 fiftieth of the ultimate value, or $3, and had this been taxed at 3 per cent, or 9 

 cents, the same aggregate revenue of $4.50 would have resulted. While such a 

 tax is not essential to justice, ijt is incidental to the plan proposed for insuring tax- 

 ation of speculative values through applying a property tax to all values in the 

 crop where cut. 



When the essential difference of the two systems is grasped — that the 

 crop is distinct from the land and the latter is still fully taxed — it will be seen 

 that but one tax upon the crop, at the rate other property pays, is all that is just— 

 and all that can possibly be paid in a competitive commercial business. The case 

 is not analogous with our present system of taxing mature timber, in which land 

 and timber together are assumed to constitute inseparable realty, stationary in 

 production and increasing only speculatively in value, therefore the comparison 

 with one year's taxation under our present system has no weight. Nor is it like 

 that of a yield tax applied to timber which has been relieved of annual taxation. 



Nor does the proposed system by any means either subsidize the forest 

 grower or assure him a profit. It is less attractive to him than the yield tax 

 proposed for the East, because he must pay when without revenue and such pay- 

 ment will compound heavily. It does, however, without reducing tax revenue 

 today, protect him from intolerable double taxation later, and merely puts on a 

 basis similar to that of other enterprises a business more greatly handicapped by 

 long-deferred returns, risk of loss, uncertainty of future prices, and continued 

 current expense without current revenue. Only escape from fire and high future 

 stumpage prices will permit profit at best. And the community is guarded agamst 

 any future circumstances unduly in his favor by the clause permitting requiring 

 him to cut the timber or have it reclassified. 



