FOREST TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES 533 
inferior quality and of slow development. For a long time, therefore, 
the property will be able to contribute little or nothing in taxes to the 
support of community functions, if, indeed, it does not involve the 
community in heavy protection expenses in ‘order to prevent it from 
becoming a menace to other property. However it hardly seems prac- 
ticable from the administrative viewpoint to distinguish, in levying a 
severance tax, between undeveloped regions with abnormally low 
property tax and developed regions where the property tax burden is 
normal, or between forests which are being operated destructively and 
those where a satisfactory degree of productivity is being maintained. 
The severance tax laws in the two States which have been mentioned 
do not attempt to make such a distinction and consequently impose 
an unjustifiable added burden on those forests which are being con- 
servatively managed and which are subject to a normal property tax. 
TAXATION IN THE BROAD FORESTRY PROBLEM 
INTRODUCTION 
In the foregoing sections the forest-tax problem has been outlined 
by showing the adverse effects of the existing tax system upon forest 
property and forest-growing enterprise. Progress toward the correc- 
tion of these adverse conditions requires at the outset a clear under- 
standing of the place of taxation in the entire forestry problem. 
Clearly there is an American forestry problem—of which taxation is 
an important part. Just as clearly, taxation is not the whole problem. 
To set forth the actual place of taxation in this problem is the purpose 
of the present section of this report. 
Since the property tax has been shown to be inherently unfavorable 
to deferred-yield property, this report is especially concerned with 
forests which do not promise an immediate annual yield. This phase 
of the problem is important because of the large area of forest land in 
the United States which has been so heavily cut over that normal 
productivity cannot be restored without a period of income deferment. 
There is no intention to minimize the desirability, from all viewpoints, 
of so organizing forests that they will produce a regular annual income 
wherever that is practicable. 
The forest problem naturally divides itself into two main parts, 
concerning respectively old-growth forests and second-growth forests 
together with denuded or other lands that are available for refores- 
tation. 
OLD-GROWTH FORESTS 
Old-growth forests present to their owners the choice of three prin- 
cipal management policies. (1) The forest may be cut without any 
effort to get regeneration or to maintain a forest-growing enterprise; 
that is, it may be operated destructively. (2) The forest may be cut 
in such a way as to insure its continued productiveness. Such con- 
servative operation may involve conversion to sustained yield, either 
annual or periodic. (8) The forest may be merely held intact for 
future sale or cutting. The public has a vital interest in the treat- 
ment of the Nation’s resources of old-growth forests and is concerned 
with taxation insofar as it is an influence in determining that treat- 
ment. Itis therefore essential to analyze the factors which determine 
an owner’s decisions regarding forest management and to put taxation 
