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smaller parcel and keep the benefits of use value on the balance of the land. This means that the developer is “actually being directly subsidized by the community for exactly the opposite purpose that the community enacted use value taxation in the first place,” Marshall contended.
Another problem with use value taxation, he noted, is that landowners from more urbanized areas with a bigger tax base receive a bigger proportion of benefit. A wider base means more tax payers to absorb the rate increase required to compensate for the loss of revenue from land use. According to Marshall, farmers from counties with smaller tax bases receive only about two-thirds of the tax deferment they get on paper — the other one-third is eaten up by the general tax increase levied to make up for the revenue lost to land use.
If localities are seriously interested in developing “institutional arrangements” that will go further in ensuring protection of agricultural land, then “they need to go further than land use taxation,” Marshall maintained. However, he noted that the Agricultural and Forestal Districts Act — a major alternative to combat development pressures — is unconstitutional as it is now written. f
Constitutional Conflict
The constitutional requirement that all similarly classified land be taxed at the same rate and the provision in the AF District law that
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