554 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
The same situation holds in the case of a fixed assessment. An assess- 
ment of $2 an acre obviously means something quite different to the 
owner of $0.50 land than to the owner of $10 land. From the point 
of view of the private owner, therefore, the fixed assessment or the 
specific tax is inherently arbitrary and inelastic and not proportioned 
either to ability to pay or to benefit rece ved. 
The uniform fixed assessment or the specific tax is arbitrary and 
inelastic not only with respect to the private owner but with respect 
to the local taxing bodies as well. Suppose that the purchasing 
power of money falls, or that the field of governmental expenditures 
continues to widen. In such event, an assessment of $2 per acre or a 
tax of $0.10 might be entirely inadequate to provide for the needs of 
government. On the other hand, if conditions were reversed such 
an assessment or such a tax might well be excessive. 
Fixed assessments and specific taxes are too arbitrary and rigid to 
offer the foundation for a sound solution of the problem of forest 
taxation. 
CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO THE OWNER’S INTENTION 
Classifications dependent on the intentions of the owner are unde- 
sirable. Ifa given tax system is satisfactory for some forest property, 
it would ordinarily be satisfactory for all forest property. To make 
the tax system dependent upon the intentions of the owner as offi- 
cially sworn to by him is to substitute, to a certain extent, intentions 
for property as an element of the tax base. Property is one measure 
of ability to pay, but intentions can never be a measure of ability to 
pay. Only insofar as intentions are materialized in acts, and acts, in 
turn, result in a different income or a different property value, can 
ability to pay be affected. 
Neither are intentions a measure of benefit received, nor have they 
anything to do with the principles of public finance whatsoever. A 
tax system which depends upon them must frankly be considered to be 
of a regulatory character, either restricting or subsidizing, as the case 
may be, the performance of certain acts or the intention of performing 
certain acts. 
In addition to these theoretical objections against classifiying prop- 
erty on the basis of the intentions of the owner, the administrative 
problems involved are generally insuperable. The determination of 
the intentions of the owner and the testing of their good faith by ad- 
ministrative processes present problems which should be avoided, not 
invited. 
Were it practicable to do so, forests being transformed to sustained 
yield might well be separated from those being destructively cut and 
a different tax system applied. A forest being destructively cut re- 
ceives favorable treatment from ‘the property tax, while one under 
transformation from a condition of understocking to sustained yield 
receives unfavorable treatment. But it is only by the results of the 
management that one type can positively be distinguished from the 
other, and the results of the management are too slow in appearing 
to justify much present tax relief to a sustained-yield enterprise. To 
make tax relief retroactive is in general against public policy, since the 
errors and burdens of the past do not influence the present manage- 
ment of a property, and if the present owner bought the property 
since they were committed and incurred, they do not rest on his 
