FOREST TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES 575 
Furthermore, the separation of timber from the local property 
tax base would involve a grave danger from the viewpoint of the 
timber owners themselves. This danger would result from loss of 
that protection against unequal tax treatment as compared with 
other taxable property in the same tax district which is enjoyed 
under the general property tax. A future legislature, hard pressed 
for funds and dominated by other than timber interests, might raise 
the yield-tax rate to a point that would make this tax more burden- 
some than the property tax. It is pertinent to note that it is this 
consideration which impels the national banks to cling so tenaciously 
to that provision of the Federal statutes which ties up their taxation 
with the taxes which the States may apply to other classes of property 
and income. 
Another seldom-considered difficulty in connection with the yield 
tax, is the heavy task of determining stumpage values and of check- 
ing the quantities of forest products reported. In view of the varia- 
tions in actual current stumpage values as between different proper- 
ties, it would be necessary to maintain an adequate force of experts 
to determine these values. Otherwise the only alternative would be 
to resort to general average figures over wide zones, resulting in 
material inequalities among different properties. ‘The temptation to 
misrepresent quantities cut would be great, and it would be difficult, 
without a burdensome administrative check, to prevent tax evasion 
through this means by small operators. The cost of administering 
the yield tax might be offset in some smal! part by the savings to be 
realized in the administration of the property tax through the elimi- 
nation of the timber element from the property tax base. 
The practical experience with yield-tax laws in the United States 
offers nothing to offset the force of these considerations against the 
yield tax. Although, as has been shown, there has been a fairly long 
legislative history, with 15 yield-tax laws today in effect in 14 States, 
there has been virtually no experience of real yield taxation. The 
laws, with only two very recent exceptions, have been optional with 
the owners. The amount of forest property that has come under 
these laws is relatively insignificant. Although under the recent 
Oregon (nonoptional) law, about 5 percent of the privately owned 
forest area has been enrolled up to this time (1933), no other State 
has more than 2.1 percent of its private forest lands subject to the 
yield-tax law, and in 7 of the 14 States the area enrolled is less than 
1 percent of the private forest area. 
The actual effect of the existing laws, so far as experience in taxa- 
tion of yield is concerned, is even less than these trifling percentages 
would indicate. Practically all the forests enrolled under the laws 
are cut-over lands or those containing young growth. Practically 
nothing in the way of yield tax has ever been paid in any State. 
Under the optional laws, owners have not enrolled lands from which 
they expected to cut timbe’ in the near future; the nonoptional laws 
apply only to cut-over lands. There has been no yield-tax revenue 
to dispose of. Since the forests subject to the laws have contained 
practically no timber of taxable value, the laws have had no effect 
upon the property tax revenues. 
It is thus—by limiting the laws so that they have been of practi- 
cally no effect, as yield-tax laws—that American so-called “‘ yield-tax 
legislation’”’ has thus far avoided the difficulties inherent in a real 
