Page:Report of the Tax Commission to Governor Angus Wilton McLean, 1927.pdf/7



The Tax Commission is under the pleasurable necessity of making acknowledgment to many persons, institutions, and departments for coöperation in the making of this survey of our tax system and its bearing upon all classes of taxpayers.

Out first acknowledgement is to the State Colleges and University for their fine coöperation. We take this opportunity of thanking the Presidents and other administrative officers of the University, State College, and North Carolina College for generously placing at our disposal the services of their best equipped professors for research in the fields which the Commission purposed to study. Our state institutions have an enviable reputation is research.

To other state departments and to the financial officers of the counties we are indebted for coöperation and help in practically every phase of our investigations. We make especial acknowledgment to Hon. R. A. Doughton, Commissioner of Revenue, for generous aid in making available official reports and information on state and local revenue.

We are under obligation to the Federal Bureau of Agricultural Economies for generous assistance in projecting and carrying through the survey of agriculture. The Bureau generously placed its farm taxation and farm management staff at the disposal of the Commission in making the study of agriculture.

The Forest Taxation Inquiry of the United States Forest Service gave real assistance in the consideration of the taxation of forests and timber-lands, for which we make due acknowledgment.

The first major investigation undertaken by the Commission, the Taxation of Agriculture, owes its value in large measure to the efforts of Dr. G. W. Forster, professor of agricultural economies, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Engineering, who directed the survey and wrote the report.

The Commission is indebted to Dr. Clarence Heer, research associate in the Institute for Research in Social Science, the University of North Carolina, for the survey of the Taxation of Public Service Corporations. For this important study Dr. Heer was peculiarly well equipped by virtue of having recently made a similar study for the Governor and General Assembly of Virginia.

One of the important and difficult problems facing the Commission when it began its work was the question of the taxation of intangible