Valuation

Valuation is the process of fixing the price or rent to be paid for a piece of property. Surveyors and valuers are often called upon to advise persons who propose to become purchasers, lessees, or mortgagees of real estate; trustees are, generally speaking, bound to take a professional opinion before advancing trust moneys on the security of land, &c. When property is required as a qualification for a franchise or office the law prescribes the rules for ascertaining the value. Again, property must be valued in order to determine the taxation to which it is subject; thus the whole property of a deceased person is valued for probate and succession duty. Domesday Book (q.v.) contains a valuation for feudal purposes of the lands of England, except the four northern counties. When revenue was raised by means of subsidies the burden was distributed 'according to the faculties of men'—i.e. according to ability to pay: land, offices, and personal property were all valued for taxation. In 1692 a new valuation was made for land-tax, and lands continued to be assessed as in that year until the Act of 1798 by which the old land-tax was rendered permanent, and means were provided for its gradual redemption. The true land-tax of our own day is the landlord's property-tax collected under schedule A of the Income-tax Act. See Griffith's Valuation.