24 
THE A B C OF TAXATION 
to take for public purposes the future increase in ground 
rent will be interested to note what an opportunity for 
putting such a plan in operation in Boston is shown by 
the above figures to have been lost twenty years ago. 
X. —Corresponding Exemptions 
In any calculation of the effect of the imposition of 
all taxes upon ground rent, it must be borne in mind 
that the landlords, who are the owners of the ground 
rents, also own buildings and other improvements upon 
the land, together with a large per cent of the personal 
property, so that they, as a class, would find the 
additional tax upon their land offset by the exemption 
of buildings and personal property. 
XI. —The Exemption of Assessed Values 
One reason why, under a just system of taxation, 
large-hearted landlords would cheerfully offer their 
necks to the tax yoke is the fact that so far as concerns 
their investment in land most of them are now privileged 
to be entirely exempt. In other words, the present 
tax is not a tax burden upon them, even though this 
fact is not to their prejudice. But while it is true that 
the capitalised value of any tax on land is deducted 
from its selling price, and that any purchaser, after the 
tax is once imposed, gets his land tax free,* so that 
the landowners of Boston who have bought their 
holdings since the present tax rate was reached are 
practically exempt from taxation, it is also true that 
*A tax, as a first lien, is practically a first mortgage to which any regular 
mortgage must be second. The effect of the tax in the first case and the 
mortgage interest in the second case upon the selling value of land is exactly 
the same. When the State imposed a tax of $10 upon a lot of land hitherto 
untaxed and worth $1,000, the effect upon the selling value was the same 
as though it had taken a first mortgage of $200, leaving to the owner as the 
selling value an equity of $800.