FOREST TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES 189 
izing effect on taxpayers generally. The practices are grossly unfair 
to those who pay their taxes promptly and without coercion and are 
of doubtful benefit to those they pretend to help. 
The evidence is thus fairly conclusive that een short-term delin- 
quency is due to a faulty collecting practice. Sometimes the fault is 
with the law, as where the penalties are too light or too severe, or the 
date of collection does not fit the income flow of the taxpayers. More 
often the fault is with fee to enforce the law. This failure in turn 
is often due to the fact that the collection of taxes and the enforce- 
ment of the delinquent-tax lien are intrusted to officers chosen by 
popular election. It is probable that with a tax calendar carefully 
designed to fit both the needs of the government and the convenience 
of the taxpayers, with penalties adequate to cover the full cost of 
delinquency, imposed without deviation, and with enforcement 
intrusted to men free from political obligations there would be very 
much less short-term delinquency. 
Faulty laws and faulty administration also contribute to long-term 
delinquency, not only because a taxpayer who gets behind finds it 
hard to catch up, but because officials are even more derelict in col- 
lecting back taxes than in collecting current taxes. Sometimes the 
law is ; indefinite as to the foreclosure procedure or as to the disposi- 
tion of land acquired through foreclosure, thus further encouraging 
the officials to adopt dilatory tactics. Nothing could be better de- 
signed to insure delinquency. However, in the case of long-term 
delinquency, leading in many instances to the loss of property, a 
faulty collecting practice is not the full explanation. There are 
usually other and more fundamental causes. 
OVERASSESSMENT 
The chief cause of long-term delinquency is overassessment. A 
property owner will rarely find it necessary to surrender title to his 
property unless the taxes threaten to absorb all or a major part of 
the expected future income therefrom. Since normally tax rates 
do not exceed 2 or 3 percent of actual value, the tax on a particular 
property is not likely to be confiscatory unless the property is assessed 
at more than its true value. It is quite possible that the current 
income from a property may be less than the annual tax levy, without 
overassessment. ‘The basis for evaluating property for tax purposes 
is market value, and that depends on expected future income, which 
in some cases may be far greater than present income. 
A property or a class of property may be assessed at no more than 
actual value and still be overassessed in proportion to other properties 
because other properties are assessed at less than actual value. This 
inequality in assessment results in some properties being overtaxed 
and others undertaxed. If the disparity is great, the tax on the 
property which is bearing the discrimination may exceed the total 
prospective income and lead the owner to let it go delinquent. Of 
course if the tax rate is moderate, slight inequalities in assessment 
may be borne without causing delinquency. It is when inequality 
in assessment is combined with a high tax rate that it constitutes an 
important cause of delinquency. 
There are many instances in the Lake States where cut-over land 
is very much overassessed, but farm land only slightly overassessed, 
if at all. There appear to be several causes for the persistence of 
