Annual Report of the New Hampsire State Tax Commission Volume 7 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...method of taxing forest areas in New Hampshire has upon the cutting of the present growth, or upon the reproduction of growth already cut. The present method applied to virgin growth, of which I am proud to say there is a little left in New Hampshire, is absolutely confiscatory--a growth that does not increase in volume in one nor in a thousand years; a property that requires no public expenditure of money for schools, for roads, for police protection or for the many other requirements that are annually boosting our tax rates in this extravagant state. There are only two such properties of any consequence left for us to tax, and they are fast fading away. The larger--a virgin forest of approximately fifty thousand acres, with its magnificent growth of spruce, balsam and hard woods--stands guarding the water sheds of some of the upper Connecticut and Androscoggin tributaries. The forest cover and the floor, which are formed, one by the green and the other by the decaying foliage, furnishes the most comfortable and the most restful place to which it is possible to escape from the burning rays of a summer's sun. It is the one beauty spot left in Xew Hampshire. It is assessed at the same rate, under our law, as the property paying the largest annual income in the taxing district. If the law is not violated, it is being so assessed every year at "full and true value." I may add, I can assure you there is no violation on the side of undervaluation on this particular property, and the process of confiscation is steadily going on. Coming to the question of the taxation of cut-over land and growing (timber. That it requires forty to fifty years, varying with the location and the quality of the soil, to raise merchantable pine trees or...