Recently the Chamber’s Committee on Taxation recommended that, 
“There should be modifications of the Federal Income Tax Law that 
will recognize adequately the peculiar nature of the business of pro- 
ducing forest crops.” The Committee felt that “to require those 
engaged in raising forest crops to take deductions annually rather 
than against the proceeds of the crops to which they relate 1s a denial 
of justice.” 
At the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, May, 1926, the following reso- 
lution was adopted: 
For reasons stated in the report of the Committee on National 
Forestry Policy, and in Referendum 42, based thereon, adequate con- 
servation and replacement of our forests is not practicable without 
relief from present customary methods of imposing annual property 
taxes upon standing timber separate from the land upon which it 
grows. The magnitude of the public interest involved warrants the 
concerted efforts of responsible state, federal and private agencies 
to plan and to secure the general application in the states of methods 
of forest taxation which will effectively promote timber conservation 
and reforestation through private enterprise. 
Results of the Ad Valorem System 
In the past it has been the custom in most states to tax standing 
timber and other forest lands on their actual assessed value, in the 
same way that houses, barns, agricultural lands and other real estate 
are taxed. This is the ad valorem system of taxation, which is still 
the practice in many states. It offers no incentive for replanting and 
cultivating young trees and protecting them until maturity. Nor 
does it give encouragement to those who desire that their commercial 
trees shall attain full growth. In addition to risks of loss by fire and 
pestilence there is the certainty of a constantly increasing tax burden 
during the long period of years while the timber is growing. Not 
only does the assessed valuation tend to increase but the tax rate 
itself increases as other mature timber is cut off, and the cumulative 
burden falls on the few remaining stands. 
The decline and eventual abandonment of many communities which 
derived their subsistence from the adjacent forest industries is one 
of the inevitable consequences of the removal of the forests without 
provision for growth. Mining communities frequently fall into decay 
with the exhaustion of their mineral deposits, but it seems an inexcus- 
able waste to force our timber into the same category, when this