The General Property Tax as a Factor in the Unsatisfactory Agricultural Situation

Abstract

T HE major adjustments in farming which have been necessitated by the changed economic conditions existing since the World War must, no doubt, be made within the farmer's own gates. In these adjustments the farmer has little to expect from legislation that will help him except the continued availability of such technical and economic information as will enable him to make the necessary changes most wisely. Of the things that are outside the farmer's own gates, those with which he can not hope to cope successfully as an individual, and for which government aid must be invoked if relief is to come, the most outstanding problem is that caused by the excessive tax burden on farm property in general and, especially, on farm real estate. No problem which confronts the farmer has so much ethical and economic justification for relief by legislation as has the tax problem. Adjustments in bases for taxation to keep pace with changes in the types and sources of incomes of the people, like most economic adjustments, are at least one or two generations behind the changes to which these adjustments tend to conform. The general property tax, at one time the sole source of income to the ruling class, still constitutes too large a share of the source of all taxes.