The losses of various kinds that would result from the transfer of other taxes to land may be thus summarised. Land would depreciate in value by an amount equal to the capitalised tax. For example; if the rate of interest were five per cent., an additional tax of one per cent. would reduce land worth one hundred dollars an acre to eighty dollars. This decline might, indeed, be partly, wholly, or more than offset by a simultaneous rise due to economic forces. In any case, however, the land would be worth twenty dollars less than it would have been worth had the tax not been imposed. For some owners this would mean a positive loss; for others it would signify mere failure to gain. The latter would happen in the case of all those owners who at any time after the imposition of the tax sold their land at as high a price as they had paid for it. Not all of the owners whose land was forced by the tax to a figure below their purchase price would suffer positive loss; for the land might subsequently rise in value sufficiently to wipe out the unfavourable difference. In this respect a special tax on the present value of land has a different effect from a tax that appropriates all the future value increases. Only those owners who actually sold their land below their purchase price could charge the former tax with inflicting upon them positive losses. In the case of the land exemplified above, the owner who sold at ninety dollars per acre could properly attribute to the tax a loss of ten dollars; the owner who sold at eighty dollars would have a grievance amounting to twenty dollars; and a loss would be suffered by any owner who sold for less than eighty dollars. In the second place, all owners of vacant land who sold at a price insufficient to provide for accumulated interest on the purchase price, could justly hold the tax responsible, so long as the deficiency did not exceed the value-depreciation caused by the tax. Thirdly, all persons whose land had an unusually high value relatively to the value of their exempted property, would suffer losses as taxpayers. They would lose more through the heavier land taxes than they would gain through the lighter taxes, or the absence of taxes, on their other property. To compensate all owners who underwent these three kinds of losses would be practically impossible. The number of persons would be too large, the difficulty of proving many of the claims would be too expensive, and the compensation process would be too long drawn out, since it would have to continue until the death of all persons who had owned land when the last instalment of the increased land taxes went into effect. Therefore, the losses in question must be counterbalanced by other and indirect methods. These will be found mainly in the following considerations: the amount of the new taxes; the gradual method of imposing them; and their socially beneficial results. _Amount of Taxes Practically Transferable_