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Show Utah Severance Tax Bans Promotion of Natural Resources Results of an eleven months' exhaustive ex-haustive survey of Utah's natural resources revealed that every one of Utah's 29 counties share in vast deposits of both metallic and non-metallic non-metallic minerals in amazing variety. va-riety. The survey, recently reported, re-ported, was made by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research of the University of Utah, under the direction of Dr. EIRoy Nelson, associate director, and under the sponsorship of the Utah Association Associa-tion of Chambers of Commerce. Despite this potential wealth, both the state and the counties may derive no good from it, H Wright Volker, secretary of the state resources committee pointed out, if the state imposes a severance sever-ance tax as proposed in HB 159. "All of Utah's mineral deposits are vast, as shown in the state mineral survey," Mr. Volker declared, de-clared, "but the report also shows that all of them are of a marginal nature. That is, the deposits are big in quantity, but small in quality, qual-ity, and as a result when they can be produced at all or 'severed' from the earth, as the tax measure describes it the margin of profit is exceptionally small if the finished fin-ished product is to compete in a highly competitive market. The addition of a severance tax to the high cost of production, would in most instances push the operation out of consideration by any investor." inves-tor." In every instance the deposits are definitely "marginal" and can be produced only at such a cost that only by strictest economy of procedure can they be made profitable profit-able at present markets or those in the forseeable future. Even the great Utah Copper mine has less than 1 copper and is profitable only because of special methods of operations discovered after the process of working is began. If the present severance tax proposal was effective when D. C. Jackling, against all advice, began operations opera-tions at Bingham, he probably would not have dared to begin mining yet the property pays Salt Lake county more than a million mil-lion a year in taxes and other millions mil-lions in state taxes and payrolls. |