PART 6. FORESTS IN THE PROPERTY TAX BASE 
CONTENTS 
Page Page 
Introduction’: sa ee EL ee 199 | Effect of full-value assessment-__---------____ 219 
All States of the United States.__...________-- 200mm Conclusions? 25225 eee ee ee 222 
Forest communities and States__...---.----- 205 
INTRODUCTION 
The preceding two parts have presented a picture of the manner in 
which the machinery of the property tax operates in the United 
States. The logical next step is to investigate the tax base. The 
property-tax base of any governmental unit may be defined as the 
aggregate of all properties taxable under the property tax expressed 
in terms of assessed value. It is the assessed value of a property to 
which the tax rate is applied in determining the taxes. It will be 
recalled (p. 119) that the assessed value is rarely the same as actual 
value, although it is legally defined as such in most States. In a few 
States, such as Minnesota, the law requires that the assessed value 
be some fraction of the actual value. 
In a study of forest taxation it is not only important to know the 
amount of the total tax base, but also the portion of this total tax 
base which consists of forests. A forest may be defined as a combina- 
tion of land and trees in which the trees more or less densely cover the 
land and are regarded as groups or stands rather than as individuals. 
For the purposes of this study, forests of noncommercial tree species 
are excluded. However, the forest may include land which is tem- 
porarily denuded of trees by logging, fire, or other causes. The term 
has no reference to the intentions of the owner in regard to the use of 
the land or its suitability for such use from the economic or silvi- 
cultural standpoint. A study of this definition of a forest should 
convince the reader that any attempted segregation, for purposes 
of this investigation, of the assessed value of forests from that of the 
other elements in the existing tax base must be approximate only. 
The reason is that real estate is usually assessed by parcels or proper- 
ties and is not generally divided into its component parts (except in a 
relatively few cases where the assessment procedure provides for a 
separation of land and buildings, or of land and timber). Various 
methods were used in this study to arrive at the best possible approxi- 
mation to the assessed value of forests in the whole United States, 
in each State, and in a number of selected local governmental units. 
The purpose of this part, therefore, is to determine for various 
political units the assessed value of forests, the total tax base of the 
political unit in question, and the ratio of the assessed value of forests 
to the total tax base. Since forests are almost invariably a part of 
199 
