Local Taxation on American Farms. 



93 



and 39-5 per cent, in Westchester; the average for the 

 whole being 39-2 per cent. 



Having thus ascertained the proportion which the unim- 

 proved land value of farms bears to their entire real estate 

 value, this result is compared with the statistics of the City 

 of Boston. The assessment of [May 1st, 1896, gave the fol- 

 lowing results for Boston: Real estate, 160,471,187/.; land, 

 excluding' buildings, 93,160,354/. ; personal property, visible 

 and invisible, 43,960,044/. This shows that the value of the 

 land without improvements in the City of Boston amounted 

 to 58.1 per cent, of the whole value of real estate. 



The total assessed value of real and personal property in 

 Boston amounted to 204,431,232/.; the personal property 

 assessed, much more than half of which belonged to the 

 invisible class, amounted to 21.6 per cent, of the total. 

 Excluding Boston, the total assessed value of all Massa- 

 chusetts property was 297,967,115/.; the value of assessed 

 personal property was 77,356,546/., being 26 per cent, of the 

 whole. Thus, the largest city in the State paid a very much 

 smaller proportion of taxes on personal property than the 

 rest of the State paid. 



It having been entirely impracticable to obtain a state- 

 ment of the invisible personal property of farmers in the 

 course of the inquiry, there are no means of comparison on 

 that point. There is, however, very little doubt that the 

 invisible personal property — that is to say, the money in 

 banks, bonds and mortgages, debts due, and the like ? 

 belonging to the farmers, who are the subject of this investi- 

 gation, and who are generally much more prosperous than 

 the average of farmers throughout the Union — must have 

 been quite as much as the amount of their visible chattels. 

 Upon this estimate their taxable personal property would 

 have amounted to about 25 per cent, of all their real and 

 and personal estate combined. 



The actual assessment of personal property on the farms 

 investigated was only 4.5 per cent of the assessed value of 

 their real and personal estate, being only about one-third 

 of the proportion which their actual visible chattels bore to 

 their entire property. 



