370 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U.S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
present law. The Massachusetts income-tax law (act of May 26, 
1916, 5. L. ch. 269, sec. 5, p. 196) passed 2 years after the forest-tax 
mee exempts incomes received from land classified under the forest- 
tax law. 
Maine, after a considerable interval, was the oe State to adopt 
the yield tax, by the act of March 30, 1921 (S. L., ch. 78, p. 85). 
This was patterned after the Pennsylvania law of 1913, except for 
the centralized administrative control features which in the latter 
law were very rigid and in the Maine law were almost wholly lacking. 
At the very next session this law was strengthened in certain particu- 
lars by the act of March 31, 1923 (S. L., ch. 138, p. 153), notably in 
the provisions for the appraisal of the land and of those trees above 
a certain size which were not to be given any tax concession and for 
the withdrawal of those portions of the area which might subse- 
quently be devoted to agriculture or other uses than tree-growing. 
Finally, the entire act was repealed and reenacted, along the same 
lines but much clarified, by the act of April 13, 1929 (S. L., ch. 306, 
p. 310). At the previous session, without affecting its yield-tax 
legislation, Maine revived the exemption type of law of the old 
regime by the act of April 16, 1927 (S. L., ch. 247, p. 232). 
Recently the yield-tax law, after having been but little used by 
forest owners, has come into considerable prominence. Owners who 
had been getting along very well under the property tax found the 
latter becoming oppressive under depression conditions and con- 
sequently sought classification under the yield-tax law as a means of 
escape. This movement so alarmed the towns whose property tax 
revenues became adversely affected thereby that they instructed 
their representative in the 1933 legislature to seek to have the law 
repealed. This was effected by the act of March 23, 1933 (S. L 
ch. 139, p. 270). 
New Hampshire, by the act of May 4, 1923 (S. L., ch. 66, p. 83), 
followed the 1922 Massachusetts yield-tax act as closely as its con- 
stitutional restrictions would permit. An out-and-out yield tax 
levied at a special rate was however not possible. So in its place a 
tax at the current property tax rate on the value of the felled timber as 
personal property, instead of its value on the stump as realty, was 
provided. As such, the law was hardly a yield-tax law at all, but 
rather a timber-exemption law with a tax on the timber only when 
reduced to the status of personalty by felling. However it was some- 
thing more than that, because under the general property tax law 
only the felled timber that i is actually on the ground at the beginning 
of the assessment year is taxable, whereas under this forest-tax law the 
timber was taxable at the time of felling, whenever that might occur. 
The law was amended at the next session by the act of April 10, 1925 
(S. L., ch. 65, p. 84), which increased the area eligible for classification 
from 50 to 100 acres and modified certain other details of classification. 
In this same year New Hampshire also revamped its old rebate law of 
1903 by the act of April 3, 1925 (S. L., ch. 55, p. 72). 
Alabama, by the act of September 28, 1923 (S. L., Act 486, p. 638), 
adopted as a part of its general forestry reorganization act, replacing 
the inoperative 1907 act, provisions for a yield tax on auxiliary State 
forests, along the line of the Pennsylvania 1913 law, replacing the 
exemption provisions of the 1907 act. This act remains unchanged 
to date. 
