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THE A B C OF TAXATION
In other words, upon every $1,000 unimproved or
site value of his land—
The farmer pays on fa, 500, or two and a half times the
actual value, say at fao a thousand, a tax of f 50
The villager pays on $400 which is 40 per cent, of the
actual value, at |ao a thousand |8
Under the single tax each would pay the same.
Should the Farmer Be Taxed on Fertility
No one questions that, after the natural exhaustion
by cropping of original capabilities of the soil, fertility
becomes a matter of individual improvement. But of
original fertility itself it may be said that:
On the surface of the globe are countless varieties of exhaustible
fertility, i. e., chemical constituents, differing in kind and degree,
from the nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon of the soil to the
carbon of the coal and the diamond. Fertility is not an attribute of
agricultural land alone. Economic fertility belongs equally to any
other land which yields to labour its product, whether in food, mineral,
or metal. Land may be fertile in wheat, corn, and potatoes.
It may be fertile in cotton, in tobacco, or in rice. It may be fertile
in diamonds, in gold, silver, copper, lead, or iron. It may be fertile
in oil, coal, or natural gas, in water power or water front. The value
of artificial fertility is an improvement value. The value of natural
fertility of any kind is a site value.
This view appears to be a welcome simplification of
the problem, and greatly to the benefit of the farmer,
because in the assessment of his taxes the element of
fertility may be disregarded, thus reducing the basis
of his assessment to that of his urban neighbor, viz;
site value alone.
Since, then, the farm land of Massachusetts, as already
shown, accounts for only one-tenth of the assessed
