450 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
The land taxes are not generally regarded as burdensome to forest 
lands. The chief difficulties have been in connection with the assess- 
ment of the tax base. The forest owners complain that the methods 
used in the valuation now in force made under instructions issued in 
1909 are not entirely fair to forest property, and they are endeavoring 
to get these methods corrected in the revaluation which is now being 
made and which is to be completed in 1935. 
Instructions for the valuation of forest land* require that the aver- 
age income from forest properties should be deduced from their actual 
product i in typical cases by the following method: Each kind of forest 
in a commune should be classified separately, and a scale of rental 
values corresponding to each such classification established. These 
values should be based on representative sales of timber, from which 
the yield in money should be obtained for a given class of forest at 
the end of the usual rotation. This yield should be divided by the 
number of years in the rotation to obtain the gross annual income. 
The costs of maintenance, administration, protection, and restocking 
should be deducted from the gross income to obtain the average net 
income. The result should be increased, when appropriate, by the 
net income from other resources such as resin, bark, and various fruits. 
The practice has been to omit income from resin ‘and bark in deter- 
mining taxable income from the land, but to tax this income under a 
different schedule as agricultural profits (bénéfices de |’exploitation 
agricoles). 
The instructions also provide that neither income from hunting 
rights nor damages caused by game should be considered as affecting 
the taxable value of forests which are under normal management for 
the production of timber crops. Only in the case of forests under 
special management as hunting and pleasure grounds should the 
value of hunting rights be included. The net rental value of hunting 
rights should be determined in accordance with the price at which 
the same or similar rights are leased, with reduction for costs of game 
protection and maintenance and for damages to the crops caused by 
game. 
The above method of valuation is best applicable to s'mple sprout 
or coppice forests (tailles simple) managed on a short rotation for fuel 
wood, a very common type among the private forests of France. It 
is not so well adapted to forests managed in whole or :n part for the 
production of larger trees or high forest (futaie), where longer rota- 
tions are required. The instructioss provide that high forests of 
hardwoods should be valued as if they were simple coppice forests of 
the same species and that forests of resinous species which do not 
sprout should be valued by comparison with other kinds of forests 
wh ch do regenerate by sprouting, taking into consideration the rela- 
tive fertility of the soil. These instructions were so difficult to apply 
in practice that the taxable ncome was ordinarily taken as the actual 
‘come from the forests over the period of the rotation, divided by 
the number of years in the rotation, reduced by the amount of the 
average annual expenses. 
The chief objections to the existing valuation made under the above 
instruciions, aside from the fact that it is now entirely out of date, 
85 Instruction ministerielle de 31 Décembre 1908, art. 26 (245, p. 133). This document was sanctioned by 
the law of Mar. 29, 1914, art. 
