FOREST TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES Hl 
forest properties under certain circumstances. The effect of these 
taxes on the business of growing forests has been studied briefly. 
Severance taxes which are imposed in some States in addition to the 
usual property tax on the nonrenewable products of the soil are ex- 
tended to forest products in a few cases. The place of such severance 
taxes in a system of forest taxation has been investigated and is dis- 
cussed briefly in thisreport. These taxes are not to be confused with the 
same kind of taxes when employed as a substitute for the property tax. 
The various business taxes, corporation taxes, franchise taxes, and 
the like, were not considered as a part of this study, their effects on 
the forest business being negligible. Sales taxes and other State 
taxes not here mentioned are not considered, since they play only a 
minor role in the whole tax burden on the forests and have no practical 
influence on the perpetuation of forests. 
The Federal excise taxes do not relate to forests or forest products 
and are not treated in this report.: 
The customs tariff has some effect on forestry and the lumber 
business, through its effect upon the prices of timber. However, the 
study of the tariff is clearly a separate topic, and it was evidently not 
contemplated by Congress that study of the tariff should be a part of 
this investigation. 
European tax systems were investigated with special reference to 
the methods of taxing forest properties, particularly in Germany, 
France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, 
for the sake of the light which foreign experience might throw on the 
problem of American forest taxation. 
Prerequisite to any useful research in this problem is the recogni- 
tion that forest taxation is not a separate problem, to be isolated, 
studied, and solved apart from the taxation of other kinds of property 
or the other problems of government finance. Forest taxation must 
be regarded as an integral part of the whole system of taxation. 
Consideration must be given to the public services which the people 
require of their State and local governments, the various sources 
from which these governments are able to draw the money necessary 
to pay the cost of rendering such services, the total amount that has 
thus to be contributed by taxation, the distribution, actual and 
ideal, of the total tax burden among the various taxpaying interests, 
the balance of public revenues and public expenditures, and the 
state of the public debt. One must consider further the relation be- 
tween governmental services and the taxable capacity of the com- 
munity; what sort of governmental services can the people afford? 
One must similarly consider the relation between taxes and the capac- 
ity to pay taxes, not of forest owners only, but of all the various 
taxable interests. Only by thus putting forest taxation in its true 
place in the whole system of public finance can progress be made. 
The present investigation has been guided by such a broad concep- 
tion of the problem of forest taxation. 
In investigating the problem of forest taxation, thus broadly con- 
ceived, those engaged in this study have undertaken first to assemble 
the essential facts and to formulate the theoretical principles involved. 
Thereafter they have sought to draw the appropriate conclusions and 
‘to offer recommendations for modification of State tax laws and admin- 
istrative procedure designed to correct existing defects and bring 
the taxation of forests as near as may be to the ideal which has 
been proposed. 
