78 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
The property tax is provided by statute for the purpose of enabling 
the States and the counties, cities, towns or townships, and other local 
jurisdictions to obtain the revenues necessary to their needs. The 
law determines what classes of property shall be .axable and what 
shall be exempt and prescribes a mass of administrative details. 
About the only legislative discretion left to the subordinate bodies 
is the power to fix the tax rates which shall be applied within their 
respective jurisdictions. The selection of assessors, collectors, and 
other administrative officers, and the actual work of administration, 
however, are almost wholly in the hands of either the towns or the 
counties, although there is a certain power of supervision and control 
lodged in the State tax commissioner or similar officer or board, the 
extent of which control varies greatly among the States. 
In the operation of the property tax there are three distinct 
processes: Assessment, apportionment, and collection. 
Assessment is the discovery and valuation of all taxable property 
of each person lable to the tax, within the assessment district 
(usually county or town) as of a certain date each year. A list is 
prepared for each taxpayer, showing in more or less detail the descrip- 
tion and value of all his taxable property. Assessment includes 
review of the original assessments by a local board whose function 
is to hear and settle appeals from any taxpayer who may feel that his 
property has been wrongly assessed. The tax lists, as corrected, 
are combined to form the town or county list (as the case may be), 
which contains at the least either a list of the names of all taxpayers 
in the town or county with the total value of the property assessed 
against each or a list of properties with their values. 
Where the assessing district is the town, each town next reports the 
total amount of its tax list to a county board, known as the county 
board of equalization, except in a few States, where the town lists 
are reported to the State board of equalization. The principal duty 
of the board of equalization is to determine after investigation 
whether the assessment in the several towns in its jurisdiction has 
been performed according to law, particularly whether the total 
value of property as assessed is equal to the full true value in each 
town. The board makes such changes in the town valuations as, 
in its judgment, will make the ratios between assessed and true 
value the same in all the towns. 
Having corrected the lists of such towns as in its opinion require 
revision, the county board makes up its county tax list, which is a 
list of all the towns with the total assessed value of the ‘property in 
each town. The total for the whole county is then reported to the 
State board of equalization or corresponding board or official. This 
board performs, with respect to the several counties, the same process 
of equalization as has just been performed by each county board with 
respect to its towns. 
Where the county is the original assessment district, there is obvi- 
ously equalization only by the State board. 
The final result, after the State board has made its revisions, is the 
State tax list, showing the total assessed value of property in the entire 
State as distributed among the several counties. 
The reason for equalization is that, as will presently appear, the 
county and State taxes are to be apportioned among the towns and 
counties in proportion to their respective tax lists, and any town or 
