2) It overlooks the difficulty of distinguishing the
value of the land "irrespective of improvements," from that of the
land as it actually is, a difficulty especially great in the case of
agricultural land.[5] The difficulty is present even in the case of
urban land when the improvements of filling, draining, and leveling
have become incorporated with the site.[6] (3) The plan ignores the
stimulus (motivating force) which private ownership has given and
still gives to the maintenance and fuller productive use of land.
Nowhere has production thriven where the state was the universal
landlord.

Sec. 10. #Various reforms in land taxation.# While the single tax plan
is defective in principle, its wide discussion has served to direct
attention toward the need of reform in the taxation of land. Some
proposals looking toward this end are widely favored by opponents as
well as by advocates of the single tax. Such are the following:

(a) The abandonment of the taxation of mortgages.[7]

(b) A more correct assessment, in accordance with the present laws,
of lots and lands held for speculative purposes, which in practice are
now greatly under-assessed.

(c) More adequate special franchise taxation upon corporations for
special privileges in the public highways.

(d) Exemption, in value equal to the costs, of improvements on land,
such as buildings, drains, fences, and fertilizers, for a limited time
after they are made, perhaps five years.

(e) The separate assessment of urban lands used as mere building sites
and of the buildings on them.

(f) Taxation of the increase ("increment") of urban land values,
periodically or on the occasion of transfer of ownership.

Sec. 11. #Difficulties in taxing corporations.#[8] Until near the second
quarter of the nineteenth century, business corporations (of which
there were few) were taxed just as was the general property of
individuals. This still continues to be the case in the main in most
of the states. The methods and machinery of assessment were (and still
are) essentially local and simple, and have proved to be inadequate
to reach or justly assess the larger and more complex corporate
enterprises when their equipment and business extend beyond town, then
county and, finally, state lines. Moreover, the corporate forms
of organization presented in complex and puzzling forms the dual
conception of property.[9] Here was the tangible wealth of the
corporation and there were the dif