Challenging Harry Gunnison Brown
on the Effects of Taxation
on Agricultural Land
George White
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, July-August
1928]
It is true enough that wherever it is proposed to draw more fully by
taxation upon the annual rental of lands farmers should be informed
how changes may affect their interests, but they are entitled to more
sensible, sound and practicable suggestions than those contained in
the article "Let the Farmers Themselves Answer," printed in
your May-June issue.
It is to me shocking that such an article was written by Professor
Harry Gunnison Brown, a teacher of "economic.*" at a state
university, who has compiled significant paragraphs from Progress
and Poverty and in other ways showed evidence of being both
informed upon and sympathetic with the Henry George philosophy. The
publication of this article in LAND AND FREEDOM without editorial
reservation or cautionary comment is to me not explicable.
There is nothing novel in the italicized phrases in the article,
regarding fertilization and taxable land values. More than thirty
years ago Thomas G. Shearman, in " Natural Taxation, " wrote
that, as a matter of course, no assessments should be made upon such
transient cause of value. In that book, it may be noted, the author
concludes that bare land selling values of cultivated farms would,
under a Single Tax system, be assessable at or nearly at 40 per cent,
of the total valuation of such farm properties. Since that book was
written there has been an enormous increase in the building and
maintaining of the county and state highways, surely increasing farm
land values, very probably out of proportion to increase in value of
farm land improvements.
Professor Brown does our programme of taking all or an increasingly
large part of land rental value for public purposes no service by
explaining that the bare land value of a farm should be arrived at,
not by estimating market value regardless of improvements, but by
first valuing improvements and then subtracting this value from the
total value of the property. This method is no more applicable to
country than to city land.
The Professor is even less to be commended upon his attempt to show
farmers how to calculate or estimate economic rent. In fact his
endeavor to point out a relation between economic rent and income is
ludicrous. A farmer's income is not dependent upon or necessarily
related to economic rent. Economic rent is often a potentiality rather
than a reality, and it can be estimated in the simplest and most
practical way by market value regardless of profitable or unprofitable
use or any use at all. If farmers are to pay in taxation "only
their economic rent if and when they receive any." to use the
Professor's own language, regardless of the value of their land
holding privilege, a most fantastic and unworkable programme is before
us.
A word must be said here about Professor Brown's contention that "the
economic rent of valuable city land, which is due largely to the
development and trade of the surrounding country, should be taken in
taxation and used for the benefit of all." 'This is not so, and
there is no agency except the United States government itself which
could undertake such a work. Some states have more valuable city lands
than others, and some states contain cities bordering upon other
states where land values may be affected by the development and trade
of the country over the border line. Courts, schools and jails, and,
to some extent, roads, may well be financed or partly financed out of
the funds of central authorities, gathered more from city than country
districts. Nothing further can be expected. Cities need great
revenues, and there is no reason why we should talk of taking the
rental of city lands and spending them "for the benefit of all."
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