90 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
county stated that the timber valuations were of long standing; how 
long he was unable to state. He had not changed the assessments 
except when importuned to do so by the owner on pieces that had 
been burned, or when logging-off was reported to him. The same 
held true to a large extent for the nontillable land not owned by 
farmers, or that owned by real estate operators for purposes of resort 
development. 
Not only property in the aggregate, but also certain classes of 
property, are kept at much the same valuation from year to year. 
There is a hesitation to reduce forest-land values after cutting, as 
with a stationary budget this would cause an increase in farm taxation. 
In decadent farm communities in cut-over forest regions, there is a 
hesitancy on the part of the assessors to reduce cut-over forest-land 
-valuations as the prospect of the agricultural utilization of this land 
fades. By maintaining these valuations on their rolls at a constant 
figure, they hope to prevent an increase in tne tax levies on farm and 
other property and also to ward off farm abandonment. In the 
organized towns of Maine the practice of giving a relatively low 
assessed valuation to merchantable timberland and changing the 
valuation very little after cutting results in a relatively high assessed 
valuation of cut-over land, but serves to maintain constant the total 
valuation of a town. In Lake County, Minn. y it was found that shore 
property on the inland lakes had been 1 increased in assessed valuation 
for the purpose of offsetting reductions in valuations on forest lands 
recently cut over. As communities become decadent, there is a 
tendency for the ratio of assessment to market value to increase on all 
property because of this tendency of assessors to try to hold their 
total district valuations constant, even though it is evident to them 
that, in fact, the tax base is shrinking. 
So many examples of assessment by simply copying are cited in 
assessment-practice literature and have been observed dn original 
investigations, that the conclusion appears warranted that the most 
usual method of placing a valuation upon real estate consists of copy- 
ing the figure found in the previous year’s assessment roll. 
Horizontal changes in value are less common than copying, but have 
much the same result. To change all assessments uniformly by the 
same percentage will obviously not change the incidence of the tax 
burden as between properties. A property which paid one-fortieth 
of the total tax in a district before the horizontal change in assessment 
will pay exactly the same fraction after the change. 
Sometimes, however, only certain classes of property are subjected 
to the horizontal change; and in such case the selected classes are put 
at an advantage or at a disadvantage, depending on whether the 
change is downwards or upwards, as compared with other classes not 
changed. In Ohio, for instance, horizontal decreases in all real estate 
values in 59 counties (over half ‘of all the counties in the State) have 
been made during a recent 6-year period between general reassess- 
ments. It was felt that there had been a general decrease in land 
values during this period, and the horizontal decrease was the least 
troublesome way of taking account of this trend. Interim re- 
appraisals of specific real properties have been made in only 3 Ohio 
counties between 1926 and 1931. 
A less innocent type of horizontal change is that which is made in 
order to increase the bonding limit of a district. In response to a 
