How Do Taxes Affect America's Private Forestland Owners?/RESPONSE: Limit Forest Service's Role Expansion to Informing Policy/RESPONSE: Comments on "How Do Taxes Affect America's Private Forestland Owners?"/RESPONSE: Forest Taxation-Who Will Speak for the Landowner?/RESPONSE: Moving beyond Tradition

States have responded by passing special laws governing taxation of forest properties (Hickman 1982, Kilgore and Ellefson 2005), such as exemption laws (exempting the value of foresrland and/or irs timber from property taxation); rebate laws (reducing property taxes for landowners who engage in sustainable forest management, such as planting trees); yield tax laws (deferring property taxes on timber until it is actually harvesred); modified rate laws (lowering property tax rates on forestland and/or timber); and modified assessment laws (using special ways of assessing the taxable value of forest properries). Because of soaring market values for developed land, however, incentives to sell remain enormous for many forestland owners. [...] tracking land values is a potential role for the USFS in cooperation with state partners to better enable owners to make informed decisions.