Aksjeopsjoner Tap Rate

Hvor begrenset lager og RSU er skattlagt Ansattes kompensasjon er en stor utgift for de fleste selskaper, og mange bedrifter finner det lettere å betale minst en del av deres ansattes kompensasjon i form av aksjer. Denne typen kompensasjon har to fordeler: det reduserer mengden av kontantkompensasjon som arbeidsgivere må betale ut, og tjener også som et insentiv for arbeidstakerproduktivitet. Det er mange typer aksjekompensasjon. og hver har sitt eget sett med regler og forskrifter. Ledere som mottar aksjeopsjoner står overfor et spesielt sett med regler som begrenser omstendighetene de kan utøve og selge dem på. Denne artikkelen vil undersøke arten av begrenset lager og begrensede aksjeenheter (RSUer) og hvordan de blir beskattet. Hva er begrenset Aksjebestemt aksje er per definisjon aksjer som er gitt til en leder som ikke er overførbar og gjenstand for fortabelse under visse forhold, som oppsigelse av ansettelse eller manglende oppfyllelse av bedriftens eller personlige ytelsesstandarder. Begrenset lager blir også generelt tilgjengelig for mottakeren under en gradert opptjeningsplan som varer i flere år. Selv om det er noen unntak, er det mest begrenset lager gitt til ledere som anses å ha insider kunnskap om et aksjeselskap, og dermed gjøre det underlagt regler for innsidehandel i henhold til SEC regel 144. Manglende overholdelse av disse forskriftene kan også føre til fortabelse. Begrensede aksjonærer har stemmerett. det samme som enhver annen type aksjonær. Begrenset aksjebidrag er blitt mer populært siden midten av 2000-årene, da selskapene var pålagt å regne aksjeopsjoner. Hva er begrensede aksjeenheter RSUer ligner begrensede aksjeopsjoner konseptuelt, men varierer i noen viktige hensyn. RSU representerer et usikret løfte av arbeidsgiveren om å gi et bestemt antall aksjer av aksje til arbeidstaker ved fullføring av opptjeningsplanen. Noen typer planer gjør det mulig å foreta kontant betaling i stedet for aksjen, men denne typen plan er i minoriteten. De fleste planer mandat at faktiske aksjer i aksjene ikke skal utstedes før de underliggende paktene er oppfylt. Derfor kan aksjene i aksjene ikke leveres før inntjening og fortabelseskrav er oppfylt og frigjøring gis. Noen RSU-planer gjør det mulig for arbeidstaker å bestemme innenfor bestemte grenser nøyaktig når han eller hun ønsker å motta aksjene, noe som kan bidra til skatteplanlegging. I motsetning til standardbegrensede aksjeeiere har RSU-deltakere imidlertid ikke stemmerett på aksjene i opptjeningsperioden, fordi ingen aksjer faktisk er utstedt. Reglene i hver plan skal avgjøre om RSU-innehavere mottar utbyttekvivalenter. Hvordan er begrenset lagerbeskattet Begrenset aksje og RSU er beskattet annerledes enn andre typer aksjeopsjoner. for eksempel lovbestemte eller ikke-lovbestemte personalekjøpsplaner (ESPP). Disse planene har generelt skattemessige konsekvenser på utøvelses - eller salgstidspunktet, mens begrenset lager blir vanligvis skattepliktig ved fullføring av opptjeningsplanen. For innskuddsplaner skal hele beløpet av det opptjente aksjene regnes som ordinær inntekt i inntjeningsåret. Beløpet som skal deklareres, bestemmes ved å trekke opp den opprinnelige kjøps - eller utøvelseskursen på aksjen (som kan være null) fra aksjens virkelige markedsverdi fra datoen da aksjene blir fullt opptjent. Forskjellen må rapporteres av aksjonæren som ordinær inntekt. Hvis aksjeeieren imidlertid ikke selger aksjene ved opptjening og selger den på et senere tidspunkt, rapporteres eventuelle forskjeller mellom salgspris og virkelig verdi på opptjeningsdagen som en gevinst eller tap. § 83 (b) Valg Aksjeeiere med begrenset lager har lov til å rapportere markedsverdien av sine aksjer som ordinær inntekt på den dato de blir gitt, i stedet for når de blir opptjent, dersom de ønsker det. Dette valget kan i stor grad redusere mengden av skatter som er betalt på planen, fordi aksjekursen på tildelingstidspunktet ofte er mye lavere enn ved opptjeningstidspunktet. Derfor begynner kursgevinsterbehandlingen på tidspunktet for tilskudd og ikke ved opptjening. Denne typen valg kan være spesielt nyttig når det eksisterer lengre perioder mellom når aksjer blir gitt og når de er vest (fem år eller mer). Eksempel - Rapportering Begrenset lager John og Frank er begge sentrale ledere i et stort selskap. De mottar hver for seg begrensede aksjebidrag på 10.000 aksjer for null dollar. Selskapets aksje handles til 20 per aksje på tildelingsdagen. John bestemmer seg for å erklære aksjene ved opptjening mens Frank velger for seksjon 83 (b) behandling. Derfor erklærer John ingenting i bevilgningsåret, mens Frank må rapportere 200 000 som ordinær inntekt. Fem år senere, på datoen lagerbeholdningen blir fullt opptatt, handler aksjen til 90 per aksje. John må rapportere hele 900.000 av aksjebalansen som ordinær inntekt i inntjeningsåret, mens Frank rapporterer ingenting med mindre han selger sine aksjer, som ville være berettiget til kapitalgevinster. Derfor betaler Frank en lavere rente på flertallet av aksjeinntektene, mens John må betale høyest mulig rente på hele beløpet som oppnås i løpet av opptjeningsperioden. Dessverre er det en vesentlig risiko for fortabelse knyttet til valgets § 83 (b) som går utover de standardmessige forkastningsrisikoen som er knyttet til alle begrenset lagerplaner. Hvis Frank skulle forlate selskapet før planen ble etablert, vil han avstå alle rettigheter til hele aksjebalansen, selv om han har erklært 200.000 aksjer til ham som inntekt. Han vil ikke være i stand til å gjenvinne de skatter han betalte som følge av valget hans. Noen planer krever også at arbeidstaker skal betale for minst en del av aksjen på tildelingsdagen, og dette beløpet kan rapporteres som et tap på kapital under disse omstendighetene. Beskatning av RSUer Beskatningen av RSU er litt enklere enn for standardbeholdningsplaner. Fordi det ikke foreligger noe aktuelt aksjeutstedelse, er det ikke tillatt å velge § 83 (b) valg. Dette betyr at det kun er en dato i planens løpetid hvor verdien av aksjen kan deklareres. Beløpet som er rapportert vil være lik markedsverdien av aksjen på dagen for opptjening, som også er leveringsdato i dette tilfellet. Derfor er verdien av aksjen rapportert som ordinær inntekt i året som aksjen blir opptjent. Bunnlinjen Det er mange forskjellige typer begrenset lager, og skatte - og fortabelsesregler knyttet til dem kan være svært komplekse. Denne artikkelen dekker bare høydepunktene i dette emnet og bør ikke tolkes som skatteråd. For mer informasjon, kontakt din økonomiske rådgiver. Den totale dollarverdien av alle selskapets utestående aksjer. Markedsverdien beregnes ved å multiplisere. Frexit kort for quotFrench exitquot er en fransk spinoff av begrepet Brexit, som dukket opp da Storbritannia stemte til. En ordre som er plassert hos en megler som kombinerer funksjonene til stoppordre med grensene. En stoppordre vil. En finansieringsrunde hvor investorer kjøper aksjer fra et selskap til lavere verdsettelse enn verdsettelsen plassert på. En økonomisk teori om total utgifter i økonomien og dens effekter på produksjon og inflasjon. Keynesian økonomi ble utviklet. En beholdning av en eiendel i en portefølje. En porteføljeinvestering er laget med forventning om å tjene en avkastning på den. Dette. Avsluttede aksjeutdelinger og skatter: Hvilke ansatte og arbeidsgivere burde vite Bruken av begrenset lagerutdeling for å kompensere ansatte vokser i popularitet i stedet for det mye malignerte opsjonsalternativet. En av årsakene til overgangen til begrenset lager er den reduserte avgiften mot inntekter gitt av aksjekurs i forbindelse med aksjekurs i forhold til aksjeopsjoner. Begrenset aksje er også mindre utvanrende for selskapets aksje enn opsjoner, fordi verdien til den ansatte kan oppnås med færre aksjer. Executive kompensasjon praksis kom under økt kongressen granskning når misbruk på selskaper som Enron ble offentlig. The American Jobs Creation Act av 2004, P. L. 108-357, tilsatt Sec. 409A, som øker inntektene til ansatte som deltar i visse ikke-godkjente utsatt kompensasjonsplaner (inkludert opsjonsplaner). Senere i 2004 utstedte FASB Statement no. 123 (R), aksjebasert betaling. som krever kostnadsbehandling for opsjoner for årlige perioder som begynner i 2005. (Retningslinje nr. 123 (R) er nå innlemmet i FASB Regnskapsstandard Kodifiseringsemne 718, Kompensasjonsstøttekompensasjon.) Median antall aksjeopsjoner (per selskap) gitt av Fortune 1000 firmaer falt med 40 mellom 2003 og 2005, og medianen antall aksjekursutvidelser økte med nesten 41 i samme periode (utgiftsreguleringsdrivne aksjekurser, samsvarsvilje 27. mars 2007). Fra 2004 til 2010 økte antall beholdningsbeholdninger for alle rapporterende ledere i SampP 500 med 88. Med den økte populariteten til begrenset lager, må CPA-skattemyndighetene være kjent med reglene for beskatning av aksjepremier når de rådgiver klienter som har blitt tilbudt eller kan bli tilbudt begrensede aksjekurser, samt når du anbefaler selskaper som utsteder prisene. RISIKO FOR FORFEITURE AND NONTRANSFERABILITY Sec. 83 bestemmer konsekvensene for inntektsskatten til både mottakermottakeren (den ansatte) og dennes stipendiat (arbeidsgiveren). Under sek. 83 (a), eiendeler overført til en ansatt som kompensasjon for tjenester, er skattepliktig til arbeidstakeren på den tidligere dato da eiendommen ikke er utsatt for vesentlig risiko for fortabelse av arbeidstaker eller datoen den kan overføres av arbeidstaker. Under regs. Sec. 1.83-3 (c) (1), foreligger det en betydelig risiko for fortabelse hvor rettigheter i aksjen er direkte eller indirekte betinget av fremtidig ytelse (eller avstå fra ytelse) av vesentlige tjenester av den ansatte (vanligvis referert til som en inntjeningsrestriksjon), eller forekomsten av en tilstand som er relatert til en hensikt med overføringen, og muligheten for fortabelse er vesentlig dersom en slik tilstand ikke er oppfylt. Et eksempel på en betingelse knyttet til formålet med en overføring er et krav om at arbeideren returnerer aksjene dersom selskapets totale inntjening ikke øker. Et av de vanligste kravene er at den ansatte forblir hos selskapet i en viss tid. Men Regs. Sec. 1.83-3 (c) (2) indikerer at et krav om at aksjen returneres når de ansatte blir utladet for sak eller for å begå en forbrytelse, vil ikke bli ansett som en betydelig risiko for fortabelse. Et håndhevbart krav om at arbeidstakeren godtar en pakt om ikke å konkurrere etter at han har forlatt selskapets ansettelse eller at de ansatte innvilger i å yte konsulenttjenester etter pensjonering, vil heller ikke bli ansett som en betydelig risiko for fortabelse med mindre de spesielle fakta og omstendigheter indikerer noe annet. Regs. Sec. 1.83-3 (c) (3) advarer om at det ikke vil foreligge betydelig vesentlig risiko for fortabelse hvor ansatte har en betydelig mengde av stemmeberettigede aksjer eller andre aksjeselskaper, med mindre de kan vise at de ikke har kontroll over selskapet og muligheten av selskapets håndhevelse av fortabelse begrensning er betydelig. Også aksjer er ikke utsatt for vesentlig risiko for fortabelse i den utstrekning at arbeidsgiveren er pålagt å betale aksjens rettmessige markedsverdi til arbeidstaker ved avkastning av aksjen (Reg. 1.83-3 ( c) (1)). Under regs. Sec. 1.83-3 (d), er aksjen ikke overførbar dersom arbeidstaker er forbudt å selge, tildele eller pantsette (som sikkerhet for et lån, som sikkerhet for å utføre en forpliktelse eller for noe annet formål) hans eller hennes interesse for aksjen til enhver person. I tillegg vil aksjene betraktes som overførbare hvis overtakeren er underlagt forspørselsbegrensningene, selv om arbeidstaker har lov til å selge, tildele eller pantsette aksjene. Et eksempel i Regs. Sec. 1.83-1 (f) gir en sikker havn til ansatt: Dersom bevis på risikoen for fortabelse er stemplet på hvert lagerbevis, anses aksjen som ikke overførbar. Forskriftene fastsetter også at aksjene ikke vil bli vurdert overførbare bare fordi arbeidstakerne kan utpeke en mottaker til å motta varen ved døden. Følgelig vil en begrenset aksjekurs resultere i skattepliktig inntekt til arbeidstakeren under Sec. 83 i et beløp som tilsvarer overskudd av aksjene FMV på den dato begrensningen bortfaller, over aksjekursen til den ansatte. Arbeidsgiveren tilpasser sitt opprinnelige grunnlag i aksjen etter inntektsbeløpet. Arbeidsgiveren kan kreve fradrag på den dato begrensningen bortfaller for beløpet som er inkludert i inntektene til ansatte. I situasjoner hvor arbeidstakeren kjøper arbeidsgiverbeholdningen med penger som er lånt fra arbeidsgiveren, Regs. Sec. 1.83-4 (c) krever at arbeidstakeren inntektsfører beløp som senere blir kansellert, tilgitt eller tilfredsstilt for et beløp som er mindre enn gjelden, i skatteåret hvor kansellering, tilgivelse eller tilfredshet oppstår. Sec. 83 (h) gir et fradrag til arbeidsgiveren i tilsvarende beløp. VALG TIL Å TILKYNNE INNTEKNING INKLUSJON Seks. 83 (b) tillater arbeidstakeren å akselerere inntektserklæringen ved å velge å inkludere erstatningsdelen av det begrensede aksjene (eventuell overskudd av FMV på tidspunktet for overføringen over beløpet som er betalt for det, fastslått uten hensyn til eventuelle restriksjoner andre enn en permanent begrensning på overførbarheten) i bruttoinntekten i året prisen er mottatt. Forfallet av restriksjonene er ikke en skattepliktig hendelse dersom den ansatte gjør valget. Valget kan være til nytte for medarbeideren, da noen verdsettelse i aksjeværdi mellom dato for tildelingen og datoen for begrensningene bortfaller, blir bare beskattet dersom og når arbeidstakeren disponerer for aksjen. I tillegg starter ansattes holdbarhetstid på prisen, ikke når restriksjonene bortfaller, slik at når arbeidstakeren disponerer aksjene, beskattes verdsettelsen ikke til ordinær skattesats, men heller til lavere langsiktig kapitalgevinst skatt rate (forutsatt at den har blitt holdt i mer enn ett år). I situasjoner hvor arbeidstakeren forventer at aksjekursen øker i løpet av den begrensede perioden, kan han eller hun derfor forvente å redusere skatteforpliktelsen med spredningen mellom hans eller hennes ordinære skattesats og den langsiktige kapitalgevinstskattesatsen. Valget kan imidlertid være skadelig, hvor aksjen senere avtar i verdi eller fortabes. Se Risikoer for den ansatte nedenfor. Regs. Sec. 1.83-2 (a) tillater valget i situasjoner der medarbeider har betalt fullverdien for aksjen, og ikke realiserer noe forhandlingselement i transaksjonen. I slike tilfeller vil ansatten ikke gjenkjenne inntekt på dato for tildelingen og vil unngå kompensasjonsinntekt for verdsettelse i aksjen etter prisen. Sek. 83 (b) valg kan få ytterligere betydning for styremedlemmer, offiserer og hovedaksjonærer i arbeidsgiveren som er gjenstand for kort svinghandelsavsetningsansvar etter verdipapirlovens § 16 b) av 1934. Sek. 83 (c) (3) fastsetter at dette potensielle ansvaret er en begrensning som definert i §§. 83 (a). Derfor kan kompenserende salg av aksjer til de som omfattes av § 16 (b) ansvar, resultere i uventet kompensasjonsinntekt til kjøperen selv hvor aksjen ser ut til å være ubegrenset (det vil si at det ikke foreligger vesentlig risiko for tap av fortjeneste eller overførbarhet) i alle andre aspekter. Gjør sek. 83 (b) valg gjør at personen kan unngå kompensasjonsinntekt når begrensningen i § 16 (b) bortfaller. Fremgangsmåte for valg. Sec. 83 (b) (2) fastsetter at sek. 83 (b) valg må gjøres senest 30 dager fra overføringsdatoen. Regs. Sec. 1.83-2 krever at arbeidstaker legger inn valget i form av en skriftlig erklæring med IRS-kontoret der medarbeider regelmessig legger inn selvangivelsen og legger til en kopi til avkastningen. Arbeidsgiveren må sende en kopi av valget til arbeidsgiveren dersom eiendomsforvalteren ikke er ansatt, skal arbeidstaker gi kopi av valget til overtakeren. Opplysningene som kreves, er angitt i Regs. Sec. 1,83 til 2 (e). Revocability. Sec. 83 (b) (2) fastsetter også at valget er uigenkallelig uten IRS-samtykke. Imidlertid Rev. Proc. 2006-31 tillater tilbakekalling dersom medarbeideren legger det på eller før forfallsdato for valg. I tillegg, under Regs. Sec. 1.83-2 (f), tilbakekalling vil bli gitt når overtakeren er feilaktig med hensyn til den underliggende transaksjonen og tilbakekallingen er forespurt innen 60 dager fra datoen da feilen først ble kjent for den personen som gjorde valget. Seksjon 5, Eksempel 3 i Rev. Proc. 2006-31 beskriver som et eksempel på en feiltakelse av en situasjon der en annen aksjeklasse overføres til en ansatt enn klassen som er angitt under en ansettelseskontrakt, der etter valget oppdager ansatt det overførte aksjene er av en annen klasse. En feil om verdien av eiendommen med hensyn til hvilken arbeidstakeren foretok valget, eller en manglende utførelse av en handling som ble vurdert på tidspunktet for overføring av eiendommen, utgjør ikke en feil i faktum. En feil i faktum inkluderer ikke en feil i fortolkning av loven, inkludert misforståelse av forfallsreglene eller noe annet aspekt av riktig skattebehandling av overføringen. Risiko for arbeidstakeren. Valget under sek. 83 (b) bærer minst to risikoer for arbeidstakeren. En er at eiendommen kanskje ikke setter pris på, men heller avskrives i løpet av den begrensede perioden. I så fall er beløpet som er inkludert i inntekt når den ansatte har gjort valget, ikke nå fradragsberettiget. Også arbeidstakeren kan bare ta fradrag når han eller hun selger aksjen, og fradraget vil bli underlagt kapitaltapbegrensningsregler. Ansatte vil finne seg i den uunnværlige stillingen å ha rapportert ordinær inntekt på tidspunktet for tildelingen og betalte den nødvendige inntektsskatten, etterfulgt av et kapitaltap ved senere disposisjon. Således, hvis den ansatte er usikker på veksten eller nedgangen i verdien av aksjen mottatt, kan han eller hun vurdere å ikke lage en sek. 83 (b) valg. En annen risiko er at under Sec. 83 (b) (1), er ingen fradrag tillatt til arbeidstakeren dersom aksjen fortabes. Husk, som diskutert tidligere, er en misforståelse av fortabelsesbestemmelsene ikke begrunnelse for å tilbakekalle valget. Men Regs. Sec. 1.83-2 (a) tillater et kapitalavdragsgebyr for det overskytte som er betalt for fortabt aksje over et beløp som er realisert ved fortabelsen, inkludert eventuell sum av kjøpesummen gjenopprettet av arbeidsgiveren til arbeidstakeren. Regs. Sec. 1.83-2 (a) advarer også om at et salg eller annen disposisjon av eiendommen som i hovedsak er en fortabelse eller er gjort i form av en fortabelse, skal behandles som en fortabelse. Risikoen for fortabelse ble brent smertefullt i Kadillak (127 T. C. 184 (2006), affd, 534 F.3d 1197 (9. Cir. 2008)). Anthony Kadillak kjøpte aksjeopsjoner som ble tildelt ham av arbeidsgiveren, og var underlagt begrensningen om at selskapet kunne utøve retten til å tilbakekjøpe aksjen hvis hans ansettelse med selskapet ble avsluttet innen fire år etter prisen. Selskapet hadde aksjene i escrow og ville overføre dem til Kadillak som de hadde i løpet av fireårsperioden. Kadillak arkiverte en sek. 83 (b) valg for aksjene. Kadillak rapporterte på sin selvangivelse årets pris en alternativ minimumskattbar inntekt (AMTI) på over 4 millioner, hvorav omtrent 3,26 millioner representerte forskjellen mellom verdien av aksjen og kostnaden for ham. Omtrent ett år etter prisen ble Kadillaks ansettelse med selskapet opphørt, og selskapet kjøpte sine ikke-investerte aksjer til kostpris. Kadillak arkiverte deretter en endret avkastning for årets pris, og hevdet at AMTI ikke skulle bli anerkjent på de ikke-investerte aksjene. Før skattemyndigheten hevdet Kadillak sek. 83 (b) valget var ugyldig fordi selskapet hadde aksjene i escrow og de ikke var lovlig overført til ham. Retten begrunnet imidlertid at, fordi Kadillak hadde alle aksjonærerettigheter i det ikke-investerte aksjemarkedet, inkludert rett til utbytte, holdt han aksjene som den faktiske rettighetshaveren derfor, hans Sec. 83 (b) valget var gyldig, og han skylde skatt på hele 3,26 millioner AMTI, som rapportert om sin opprinnelige avkastning. Kadillak appellerte til niende krets, som bekreftet skattemyndighetene. Bedriftsfradrag. Sek. 83 (b) valg påvirker også beløpet og tidspunktet for fradraget tillatt selskapet på sin inntektsavkastning. Vanligvis er selskaper som tillater begrenset lagerutdeling til ansatte, tillatelse til fradrag når restriksjonene bortfaller. Men der arbeidstaker har laget en sek. 83 (b) valg, aksjeselskapet akselereres til tildelingstidspunktet. I situasjoner der aksjekursen har økt i begrensningsperioden, er sek. 83 (b) Valg resulterer i et lavere fradrag for selskapet enn hvis sek. 83 (b) valget var ikke gjort. Begrensede aksjeenheter. Noen arbeidsgivere velger å utstede begrensede aksjeenheter (RSUer) til ansatte i stedet for begrenset lager, fordi ansatte ikke kan gjøre en sek. 83 (b) valg i forbindelse med begrensede aksjeenheter. RSU er ufinansierte løfter om å betale kontanter eller aksjer til arbeidstakeren basert på en opptjeningsplan. En RSU er vanligvis likeverdig til en andel av aksjemarkedet. Selskapet leverer ikke kontanter eller aksjer på aksjen før inntjeningskravene er oppfylt. RSU-deltakere har ikke stemmerett på aksjen i løpet av opptjeningsperioden, fordi de faktisk ikke har blitt utstedt aksjer. Reglene i hver plan bestemmer om RSU-innehavere mottar utbytteekvivalenter. Utstedelse av RSU gjør det mulig for arbeidsgiveren (i stedet for arbeidstakeren) å kontrollere tidspunktet for kompensasjonsfradrag og å ha mulighet for et større fradrag dersom verdien av arbeidsgiverbeholdningen øker i løpet av den begrensede perioden. I tillegg trenger ikke arbeidsgivere som utsteder RSUer å holde rede på om ansatte har gjort Sec. 83 (b) valg. HJELPENDE KUNDER GJØR EN INFORMERT BESLUT Det er viktig at ansatte forstår skattemessige konsekvenser under Secs. 83 (a) og (b) slik at de kan ta en informert beslutning og ikke bli sittende fast med en uventet skatteforpliktelse. CPA skatteutøvere bør gi råd til sine klienter som har blitt tilbudt eller kan bli tilbudt begrensede aksjer av fordelene og risikoene knyttet til en Sec. 83 (b) valg. Valget vil være gunstig for kunden dersom kunden er sikker på at han eller hun ikke vil miste aksjen og at aksjen vil sette pris på verdi i løpet av den begrensede perioden. På den annen side vil valget ikke være til fordel for klienten dersom han eller hun fortaber aksjene, og ordet faller i verdi etter at valget er gjort. CPA-skatteutøvere som anbefaler bedriftskunder som utsteder begrenset lager, bør påpeke at beløpet og tidspunktet for kompensasjonsavdraget på selvangivelsen for begrenset lager kan påvirkes av de ansatteaksjoner. Fradraget kan reduseres dersom ansatte får lov til å gjøre sek. 83 (b) valg. En slik mulighet eksisterer imidlertid ikke, dersom konsernet utsteder begrensede aksjeenheter i stedet for begrenset lager. Mens kompenserende aksjeopsjoner har gått ut av favør, har bruken av aksjekurs for aksjekurs økt. Aksjen er ikke skattepliktig til den ansatte før den enten ikke lenger er utsatt for vesentlig risiko for fortabelse av arbeidstaker eller overførbar av den ansatte. En risiko for fortabelse foreligger generelt dersom medarbeiderne skal forbli ansatt i selskapet, eller selskapets inntjening rammer bestemte mål og arbeidsgiveren er ikke forpliktet til å betale aksjene rettferdig markedsverdi (FMV) til arbeidstakeren dersom den fortabes. Ansatte kan velge i stedet under Sec. 83 (b) å inkludere i bruttoinntekt ved overføring, aksjer FMV (uten hensyn til eventuelle andre restriksjoner enn en permanent begrensning av overførbarheten) over det beløp de betalte for aksjen. Risikoen for ansatte inkluderer imidlertid at det ikke gis noe fradrag for tap ved disponering av aksjen hvis aksjen fortabes. Valget kan kun tilbakekalles under noen omstendigheter, inkludert en feil i forhold til valget. CPAer kan hjelpe enkelte skattebetalere til å ta informerte beslutninger om begrenset lager, og om de skal gjøre en sek. 83 (b) valg. De som gir råd til bedriftskunder kan gi veiledning angående beløp og tidspunkt for fradrag for betalt aksjekompensasjon. Steven T. Petra (actstphofstra. edu) er professor og direktør for høyere utdanningsprogram i beskatning ved Hofstra University i Hempstead, N. Y. Nina T. Dorata (doratanstjohns. edu) er lektor ved St. Johns University i New York City. For å kommentere denne artikkelen eller foreslå en ide for en annen artikkel, kontakt Paul Bonner, seniorredaktør, pbonneraicpa. org eller 919-402-4434. Skatterådgiverens artikler Skatteimplikasjoner av transaksjoner som involverer betinget vurdering, august 2010, side 558 Skatteklinikk: Sek. 83 i sammenheng med kontraktsproduksjon, september 2009, side 590 Skatteklinikk: Begrenset aksje i oppkjøp: IRS gir svært nødvendig veiledning, april 2008, side 199 For å finne artikler fra Skatterådgiveren. gå til thetaxadviser og søk etter år i venstre kolonne. AICPAs 1040 Tax Return Workshop av Sid Kess (735226) AICPAs 2011 Individuell skatteanmeldelsesserie: Utover det grunnleggende (733634) Innovativ skatteplanlegging for enkeltpersoner og enslige innehavere (745535) Konferanse om ansattes fordelplaner, 30. april, 2, Atlanta For mer informasjon eller å kjøpe eller registrere, gå til cpa2biz eller ring instituttet på 888-777-7077. Skatterådgiveren og Skatteavdelingen Skatterådgiveren er tilgjengelig til nedsatt abonnementspris til medlemmer av Skatteavdelingen, som gir verktøy, teknologi og samspillet til CPA med skattepraksis. Mer enn 23 000 CPAer er medlemmer av skatteavdelingen. Seksjonen holder medlemmene oppdatert om lovgivningsmessige og regulatoriske utviklinger av skatt. Besøk skattekontoret på aicpa. orgtax. Nåværende utgave av Skatterådgiveren er tilgjengelig på thetaxadviser. Mer fra JofA: Avhending av Americas Offentlig Land Jernbanegrund Grants Bevegelsen for Forfeiture Gevinster Steam 75 Years of Land Grant Forfeiture Utfyllelse og Mislighold av Forfeiture Land Grant Legacy Leve På Referanser Sitert Jeg ønsker nå å forhindre et evig monopol på over 50.000.000 hektar lander av et enormt jernbaneselskap. Jeg håper at den amerikanske senaten. vil ikke gjennom deres handling her for tiden føre til at deres etterkommere forbanner deres minner for dermed å bygge opp et så stort monopol til skade for landet, til undertrykkelse og skade for alle som kan bosette seg i den regionen. - US Senator Howell, som argumenterer mot ytterligere subsidier til Northern Pacific Railroad, i 1870. Maktmaktene som er involvert i en slik konsentrasjon av grunneier, uavhengig av tømmeret, krever neppe diskusjon. Faren for misbruk av denne kraften, i fravær av restriktiv regulering, er åpenbar. Denne faren øker også sterkt fordi noen av de største eierne av dette landet også okkuperer dominerende stillinger i jernbanetransport over store deler av landet. - US Bureau of Companies, 1913-14. Historikeren er mindre interessert i om regjeringen kjørte en skarp handel enn han er i skjebnen til de 174.000.000 hektar Federal land og de om lag 49.000.000 hektar statlige landområder som ble tilbudt til jernbanene. - Historikeren David Maldwyn Ellis, 1946 Leksjonen til jernbanetillatelsen tilskudd etter mer enn hundre år er at regjeringen ikke har vært i stand til å håndtere bekreftende og i armlengden med sterke økonomiske interesser. - Attorney Sheldon Greene, 1976. Avhending av amerikanske offentlige landområder Kort etter revolusjonen begynte den amerikanske regjeringen å overføre mye av kontinentet til privat eierskap. Mer enn en milliard hektar ble gitt eller solgt til krigsveteraner og andre personer for deres tjeneste til nasjonen, gitt til stater for å utvikle sine utdannings - og transportsystemer, til enkeltpersoner for homesteading, og til bedrifter for å utvikle vann-, tømmer - og mineralressurser for nasjonen. Lovene som ble vedtatt for å overføre offentlige land til private hender, omfattet landloven fra 1796, 1841-fristen, 1862 Homestead Act, General Mineral Law of 1872, Desert Lands og Timber Amp Stone Acts på 1870-tallet. Loven lyktes raskt å gi bort størstedelen av offentlige land, men ikke alltid, som vi skal se, for allmennheten. Ved slutten av 1880-tallet ble landlovene revidert eller opphevet, fordi slutten var i sikte for avhending av amerikanske offentlige land. Som advokat og landreformør Sheldon Greene har beskrevet, i løpet av de første hundre årene, var USAs arbeid å ta i besittelse av landet. Den kolonisering og territoriale ekspansjonen av USA ble ganske enkelt satt, en kolossal landstrøm. En slik overføring av rikdom ble ikke oppnådd uten spekulasjon, grådighet og direkte svindel. Gjennom mye av bosetningen og preemption og homestead eras, korrupsjon i landhandel var regelen, i stedet for unntaket. Hodet til US General Land Office, agenturet som utbetalte føderale land, anslått at svindel i 1883 utgjorde 40 prosent av de 5 årige homestadene, 90 prosent av tømmerkravene og 100 prosent av Preemption og commuted Homestead hevder. En undersøkelse fra 1910 anslått at 90 prosent av preemption og homestead land i Wisconsin faktisk hadde blitt kjøpt for tømmer. På 1880-tallet var det gått for dummy entrymen i området fra 50 til 125, og du kunne kjøpe et vitne for 25. Gjerning og avfall så preget den tiden at den ble kalt Great Barbecue. Avhending av det offentlige området var uløselig knyttet til Gilded Age, Robber Barons, Wild West, og de andre store myter av den amerikanske industrialderen, og til dramaene og problemene de omfatter. Mange av disse dramaene spilles fortsatt ut over hele landet i dag. Det er formålet med dette papiret å skissere suksessene og fiaskoen i bevegelsen for å revurdere jernbanetillatelsene, og for å vise at så lenge de utilsiktede imperier i jernbanestøtten fortsetter å eksistere, de politiske, sosioøkonomiske og miljømessige kontroversene vil også fortsette, så vil alternativer for å ta til rette for å revetere landene tilbake til offentligheten. Tabell 1. Disponering av offentlige land Type tilskudd eller salg Jernbanetillatelser En av de mest kontroversielle av disposisjonene i offentlige land var jernbanetillatelsene, en serie føderale og statlige handlinger mellom 1850 og 1871. Det skinnende formål med jernbanen Landstipendier skulle bygge de transkontinentale jernbane - og telegrafsystemene, og for å bidra til å bosette seg i Vesten. Jernbanekorporasjonene, ofte føderalt chartererte offentlige selskaper, var i virkeligheten å være agenter for føderale og offentlige offentlige landpolitikker. Jernbanene, i motsetning til US General Land Office, vil som vanlig være å selge landet til nybyggere, og bruke pengene som heves til å betale for bygging av de nasjonale transport - og kommunikasjonssystemene. Foruten disse bestemmelsene om offentlig salg var det andre forhold som ble satt på landstøttene, inkludert bygging av jernbanene innen en angitt periode, som gir jernbanetjenesten i evighet og transport av militær og postfrakt til reduserte priser. Naturen, omfanget og gjennomføringen av landstøtteprogrammet ble diskutert varmt i mange år. Foresatte av landstøttene inkluderte argumentene at nasjonen trengte militære veier for de indiske krigene og borgerkrigen. Vesten var en villmark som måtte løses og utvikles. Folk trengte land, men vestlige land var verdiløst uten å åpne ved jernbanene. Landstipendier var den eneste måten å finansiere jernbanekonstruksjonen, og USA ville ikke miste penger ved å gi halvparten av sitt land og selge den andre halvparten til dobbelt pris. Motstandere av landbaserte tilskudd argumenterte for at jernbanene ikke skulle bli subsidiert med offentlige ressurser, og at regjeringen ville miste inntekter fra sitt offentlige salgsprogram. Landstøttene var langt over det som var nødvendig for å sikre bygging av jernbanene, og ville resultere i bedriftsmonopol på land og ressurser. Selv etter at debatten fortsatte, begynte landstipendiene å bli lovfestet, med motstandere som klarte å inkludere det som var antatt å være beskyttelser mot misforvaltning eller misbruk. Tabell x. Estimater av Railroad Land Grant Acreages Før 1862 ble tilskuddene gjort via statlige myndigheter ni stater tildelt nesten 49 millioner hektar i jernbanetilskudd. I 1862 begynte den føderale regjeringen å gi tilskuddene direkte til jernbaneselskapene, med adventen av interkontinentale jernbanestasjoner. Tabell 2 viser det største av landstilskuddene. Tabell 2. Jernbanetillskudd Over en million hektar total arealareal Tre fjerdedeler av alle jernbanestøtteområder ble til slutt samlet under de fire jernbanene: Nord-Stillehavet (40 millioner hektar), Santa Fe (15 millioner hektar), Sørlige Stillehavet (18 millioner hektar), og Union Pacific (19 millioner hektar). I 1995 og 1996, etter mer enn et århundre med å anskaffe og konsolidere dusinvis av mindre jernbaner, ble disse fire jernbanene fusjonert i to: Burlington Northern Santa Fe og Union Pacific (som hadde kjøpt Sør-Stillehavet). Jernbanetillatelsene dekket ti prosent av kontinentale USA, men på grunn av korridor - og kontrollpanelmønstrene av tilskuddene, strekker deres innflytelse betydelig utover det. En historiker anslår at jernbaneselskapene kontrollerte bosetningen av en tredjedel av landet, og en enda større del av det amerikanske vesten, der de fleste landtilskuddene var lokalisert. Selv i dag er de største grunneierne i mange vestlige stater fortsatt landsgodene og deres bedriftsarvinger. Mye av landet har blitt solgt til eller spunnet ut i nye selskaper, og arven fra det nittende århundre jernbanetillatelser er en bemerkelsesverdig og plagsom konsentrasjon av grunneeiendom og utnyttelse av naturressurser som aldri var ment for kongressen. Kontrollen av stipendlandene har og fortsetter å omsette til økonomisk og politisk makt for de selskapene som kontrollerer dem. Som med de fleste av de offentlige landområdene, var jernbanestipendiene florerte med svinekjøpspolitikk og svindel. Handlinger begått for å unnslippe bestemmelsene i landbasertillatelsen, eller for å bedra i regjeringen, offentligheten, og jernbaneselskapene, inkluderte: Bestikkelser av føderale og lokale tjenestemenn. Trusler og vold mot tjenestemenn, konkurrenter, bosettere og jurymedlemmer. Ansette dummy entrymen å unnslippe offentlige salg bestemmelser av landstilskuddene. Lager vanning (selger flere aksjer enn selskap er verdt) og andre former for økonomisk manipulasjon og svindel. Ulovlig konkursbehandling. Falsk reklame i landsalg. Videreføring av byggefond til eiendoms - og ikke-jernbanevirksomheter. Diskriminerende jernbanesatser som diskrimineres med bønder og andre små avsendere. Prisfastsetting, ulovlige tilbakeslag og annen kjære handler med låste selskaper. Manglende undersøkelse og patenttilskudd lander for å unngå eiendomsskatt. Holding av tilskudd land for spekulasjon av fast eiendom og andre ikke-jernbane formål. Stjeler tømmer fra tilstøtende offentlige land. Dårlig jernbanetjeneste og forlatelse av grener. Monopolistisk agribusiness praksis: jernbane kontrollert bønder transport, korn terminaler, boliglån og andre lån, og ofte inspisert bønder bøker for å overvåke deres fortjeneste, og sette sine priser på hva trafikken kan bære. Kontroll av regionale økonomier og ødeleggelse av små bedrifter. Avskoging og tap av biologisk mangfold. Giftig avfall fra gruvedriften. Bedriftsregering utveksling av sjakkbrett grant land for enda flere offentlige land. Noen av disse problemene oppdaget i flere tiår etter at tilskuddene var blitt gjort og jernbanene var blitt bygget. Andre fortsetter etter mer enn et århundre, mens noen bare begynner å bli hørt. Av mange grunner, fra mangel på kapital, ujevnt terreng, dårlig vær, ingeniørproblemer, arbeidsproblemer, gjentatt konkurs, misforvaltning, korrupsjon og direkte svindel, ble mange av jernbanene ikke bygget som planlagt: faktisk førti De sytti landsgjenvinningsbanene savnet byggnadsfrister. For eksempel, Nord-Stillehavsområdet, etter å ha gått glipp av sine tidsfrister flere ganger, tok tjue år (1864 til 1883) å bygge, og gjorde fremdeles krav på tilskuddslokaler i 1940. Til slutt, etter byggeprosessene, kollapser økonomisk, søksmål og fortabelser og gjenopptredener, ble bare tre fjerdedeler av det totale tilbudet om areal som ble tilbudt, faktisk overført til jernbanene. Nesten mer enn 131 millioner hektar føderalt land, og nesten 49 millioner hektar statlig land, ble til slutt overført til 61 jernbaner, inkludert 25 prosent av landet i Washington og Minnesota, 20 prosent av Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota og Montana, 14 prosent av Nebraska og 12 prosent av California. Mellom 1867 og 1890 ble omkring 35 millioner hektar fortapt av 20 jernbaner tilbake til den føderale regjeringen på grunn av at jernbanene ikke oppfyller deres krav til landtilskudd. I 1916 ble to millioner hektar revested fra Oregon og California Railroad. I 1929 mistet Nord-Stillehavsbanen sin påstand om ytterligere tre millioner hektar. I 1941 ble rundt åtte millioner hektar flere landskrav utgitt av jernbanene, som i bytte ble utgitt fra deres kontrakt for å gi regjeringen nedsatte renter. I den konvensjonelle visdommen var jernbanestøtteperioden æra over. But by tracing the history of forfeiture, and examining its accomplishments and failures, we will see that the land grant legacy is very much alive. The Movement for Forfeiture Gains Steam The construction of the land grant legislation turned out to be a bigger challenge than the construction of the railroads. Given the ineptitude and collusion of the U. S. General Land Office, Congress, and the courts, the publics ambivalence toward corporations, the near-universal desire for private property, the confusion between the nature of private and corporate property, and the widespread beliefs in manifest destiny and the inexhaustibility of the frontier and its resources, it is no surprise that the land grant policy was troubled from the beginning. There were debates over the propriety and magnitude of federal subsidies to corporations for building public roads. While there had been land subsidies for canals for decades, the railroad enterprise dwarfed the canals. Not everyone had equal enthusiasm for building thousands of miles of rail lines through the wilderness of the West. The debate over the need for the railroads was mixed with debates over states rights and the nature of interstate commerce. Intertwined with these questions were the regional disputes of the 1850s, which stalled Congresss selection of the general routes of the railroads. With the onset of the Civil War, the Southern delegation left Capitol Hill in the hands of Northern politicians. Not surprisingly, then, when Congress passed the 1862 Pacific Railway Act, the first transcontinental railroad was the Union Pacific rather than the Confederate Pacific. The Northern Pacific followed two years later. Once a majority of Congress was persuaded that transcontinental railroads should be subsidized by the federal government, there were additional problems in the design and implementation of the subsidy policy. The land grant legislation itself was ambiguous and contradictory. It was poorly administered by the Interior Department, the General Land Office, and U. S. Forest Service, which often colluded with the railroad corporations to transfer excess land. There was an unclear and shifting jurisdiction between the legislative, administrative, and judicial branches, and all three branches alternated between indecisiveness and collusion. The unfortunate checkerboard pattern of the land grants had begun during the canal land grant era, and continued with the railroad grants as a concession to opponents both of land subsidies and of interstate railroads. Land grant proponents compromised by agreeing to grant every other square-mile section of land to the railroads. The rationale for this was that the governments sections would double in value because of their proximity to the railroad, and thus the government would lose no revenues from its own land sales. The reality turned out quite differently for a number of reasons, including the fact that ultimately, not all the checkerboards were sold by the railroads or by the government, and the fact that the government did not always receive the expected 2.50 per acre. The pork barrel nature of many of the railroad projects, which seemed designed more to line private pockets than to build rail systems, became apparent early on. In some cases, land grants passed from corporate shell to corporate shell, without the roads ever being built. With a rising Populist movement threatening more than land grant forfeiture, a divided Congress finally began to recover some of the unearned land - even before ending the handouts. Arguments for forfeiture were based on the views that many of the railroads hadnt been built on time, or at all, or had abandoned unprofitable lines. The railroads were actually delaying settlement by withholding land they were supposed to sell to the public the railroads should not be rewarded for their speculative holding of lands. The railroads received more land than they needed to construct and maintain the railroads the excess should be returned to the public domain. Opponents of forfeiture tried to defend the railroads, saying that the railroads had earned their grants, and the U. S. was responsible for fulfilling its part of the contracts. Revesting grant lands would deprive railroad stock and bondholders of their value. Many stockholders were widows and orphans. Some of the railroads claimed that the unsold lands should not be forfeited because the land grant legislation did not actually require them to sell their land, but only to dispose of it. Union Pacific Railroad mortgaged its lands to an affiliated corporation, and claimed that while the lands had not been sold to settlers, they had been disposed of, and so were not subject to forfeiture. The Supreme Court agreed in that case, but rejected that argument in the Oregon amp California Railroad case. The Northern Pacific Railroad made a similar claim, that in its 1890s bankruptcy, it had sold the lands - even though they were all sold to one of its own subsidiaries, the Northern Pacific Railway . Northern Pacifics land transfers to itself were also approved by federal courts. Forfeiture was not the only method used to try to enforce the public sale requirement of the land grants. Two other methods were the homestead clause and administrative action by the General Land Office. After 1866, land grants included a homestead or actual settlers clause requiring the sale of grant lands to actual settlers only, in maximum parcels of 160 acres, at a maximum price of 2.50 per acre. This clause was routinely ignored by many of land grant corporations, as well as by the administrative agencies and Congress. One of the most disturbing aspects of the land grant story is the continued failure of Congress to draft unambiguous legislation, and the failure of the administrative and judicial bodies to enforce the law. Occasionally, as in the Oregon amp California case, violation of the settler clause did result in revestiture. But even in that case, the railroad was paid for the land (at the rate of 2.50 per acre, as specified in the land grant contract), and the illegal sales were allowed to stand. The public sale provision was reemphasized in 1870, when U. S. Representative William Holman of Indiana introduced a resolution declaring that the remaining public lands should be held for the exclusive purpose of securing homesteads to actual settlers under the homestead and preemption laws. The House endorsed the resolution, but proceeded to grant another 20 million acres to railroad corporations in the next year. Holman became the shepherd of forfeiture legislation for twenty years. He introduced legislation throughout the 1870s and 1880s, and in 1884 sponsored a stronger resolution calling for the forfeiture of all expired land grants. He was also a principal participant in the compromises which led to the General Forfeiture Act in 1890. 75 Years of Land Grant Forfeiture The forfeiture of land grants began even before they were all handed out, and continued for 75 years. Twenty-six railroads lost 40 million acres. There were many reasons for forfeiture, and most of the forfeitures were enacted as separate acts. For simplicity, historian David Ellis has divided the land grant forfeitures into three periods, to which we may add a fourth and fifth. Period 1: 1867-1877: The Early Period of Forfeiture The decade marked the end of the land grants and the beginning of forfeiture. Wholesale forfeiture was restrained by the wish to complete the railroad system, and by the fact that many grants did not expire until after 1877. Total forfeited: 650,000 acres. By 1872, the Republican Party followed the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats in adopting a platform against additional land grants. In 1873, the Credit Mobilier scandal broke. The Credit Mobilier, a construction subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, had bribed its way to success by giving shares of stock to the U. S. vice-president, the vice-president-elect, Congressional committee chairmen, a dozen Republican House and Senate leaders, and the Democratic floor leader. Millions in capital were missing, reportedly funneled into the Credit Mobilier. All this became public knowledge: The members of it are in Congress they are trustees for the bondholders, they are directors, they are stockholders, they are contractors in Washington they vote these subsidies, in New York they receive them, upon the Plains they expend them, and in the Credit Mobilier they divide them. Under one name or another a ring of some seventy persons is struck. Congress investigated itself, and censured a few of its members. UP stock fluctuated, manipulated by railroad financier Jay Gould, and the UP debt to the U. S. went unpaid. The affair left the public aware of and disgusted by financial and political manipulation on a grand scale. In the beginning, forfeiture was seen as an administrative matter in which the General Land Office could restore to the public the grant lands of a railroad which had failed to meet its construction deadlines. In 1874, the Supreme Courts Schulenberg v. Harriman decision made forfeiture more difficult by ruling that it required Congressional action. If the grant be a public one, it must be asserted by judicial proceedings authorized by law. or there must be some legislative assertion of ownership of the property for breach of condition. In other words, even when a railroad failed to comply with the land grant conditions (as they often did), the title to the land remained with the railroad if the government did not take positive action. Even when lawsuits or legislative actions were underway, the lengthy nature of these actions meant that the railroads could proceed to construct track and patent land. Citizen oversight did not exist, and government oversight was often tardy or nonexistent. In 1877, the General Land Office urged Congress to either extend the construction deadlines or take action to forfeit the unearned grants. In that same year, a decade before the Northern Pacific forfeiture controversy reached its full height, Washington Territorial attorney general McGilvra urged the forfeiture of NPs Cascade branch. Period 2: 1877-1887: Major Period of Forfeiture During this decade, while 21 million acres of grant land was reopened to settlement, many railroads managed to avoid forfeiture by continuing construction. Total forfeited: 28,000,000 acres. Railroads Forfeiting Grant Lands Iron Mountain RR (MO, KS) Oregon Central RR (OR) Texas Pacific RR Atlantic amp Pacific RR (MO, AR, to Pacific Coast) Jackson (MS) to AL Elyton to Tennessee River (AL) Memphis and Charleston Railway (AL, SC) Savannah amp Albany RR (AL) New Orleans to MS State (LA) In 1878, Representatives Joyce and Thurman introduced forfeiture legislation in the House the Thurman bill forced the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to create sinking funds to ensure repayment of their debts to the government. Ever-creative, the railroads themselves used forfeiture as a strategy against their rivals. For example, Henry Villard, who controlled the Oregon Navigation and Railroad Company, pushed for the forfeiture of the Northern Pacifics grant, until he gained control of the NP in 1881. Subsequently another NP rival, the Central Pacific, pushed for the forfeiture of NPs grant in the 1882 Casserly bill. In the early 1880s, Knights of Labor and the Greenback National Party urged forfeiture, and by 1884, both major political party platforms included forfeiture, though the Republican platform included a loophole for any railroad except those where there has been no attempt in good faith to perform the condition of such grants. In 1883, the Knights of Labor urged forfeiture. In 1883, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary suggested that the courts, rather than Congress, were the proper arena for forfeitures, but on January 21, 1884, the House passed, in a 251 to 17 vote, a resolution introduced by forfeiture champion William Holman. The resolution urged the recovery of all unearned grants, and gave priority to forfeiture bills on the congressional calendar. More than half of the 70 railroads were not built on time. By 1885, up to a hundred million acres of grant lands lay along late or non-existing track. These became the focus of the proposals for a general forfeiture act. The U. S. General Land Office The U. S. Department of Interiors General Land Office (GLO), as the administering agency for public lands, was a key to the failures and the forfeitures of the land grants. Created in 1800 to administer the transfer of public lands into private hands, the GLO was variously described over the next 150 years as underfunded, inept, andor corrupt. It was at times all of those, and played a key role in the implementation of the homestead and land grant policies. The GLO Commissioners report for 1872 admitted that the agencys substandard salaries made the agency merely a sort of training school for land lawyers and agents for railways and private land companies. The GLO training school had a revolving door which very well served those corporations. For example, both of the principals of the premier land law firm of Britton amp Gray were former employees of the GLO, and their brothers-in-law were chief clerk and assistant chief of the GLOs railroad division. Britton amp Gray represented the Atlantic amp Pacific Railroad in its unsuccessful defense against the GLOs 1885 revocation of unselected indemnity lands, but were quite successful representing the Northern Pacific during the 1920s-30s hearings and lawsuit brought by the U. S. government. The nemesis to the General Land Offices routine failures and collusion was William Andrew Jackson Sparks, a self-made attorney, federal lands office receiver, Illinois state representative and senator, and from 1872 to 1882, a U. S. Representative, where he was an advocate of railroad regulation. In March 1885, Sparks was appointed GLO Commissioner by Grover Cleveland. Sparks found the state of affairs intransigent as well as unacceptable: I found that the magnificent estate of the nation in its public lands had been to a wide extent wasted under defective and improvident laws, and through a laxity of public administration astonishing in a business sense if not culpable in recklessness of official responsibility. That the abuses of the public lands laws are largely due to inefficient administration, to the conduct of weak or corrupt officials, and to erratic and fanciful decisions, is undeniable but that the laws themselves are defective in want of adequate safeguards is also true. The vast machinery of the land department appears to have been devoted to the chief result of conveying the title of the United States to public lands upon fraudulent entries under strained construction of imperfect laws and upon illegal claims under public and private grants. Within a month of being appointed GLO Commissioner, Sparks suspended the transfer of homestead entries in 10 states. He recommended the repeal of preemption acts and other public land laws that cash sales should be stopped, and that land should be made available to actual settlers only. Sparks also abolished land lawyers access to GLO clerks, thus making bribery and threats more difficult. Sparks estimated that ten million acres had been claimed in excess of the land grant formulas, and in 1885 and 1886, he administratively revoked 97,000 acres of NP grant land in Washington state, and 1.5 million acres of Atlantic amp Pacific Railroad grant in California, but he failed to recover another 90,000 acres from the AampP in Missouri. Sparks also went after lands fraudulently claimed by timber corporations. Depredations upon public timber are universal, flagrant, and limitless. Whole ranges of townships covered with pine timber, the forests at headwaters of streams, and timber land along water-courses and railroad lines have been cut over by lumber companies under pretense of title derived through preemption and homestead entries made by their employees and afterward assigned to the companies. Steam saw-mills are established promiscuously on public lands for the manufacture of lumber procured from the public domain by miscellaneous trespassers. Large operators employ hundreds, and in some cases thousands of men, cutting government timber and sawing it into lumber and shingles. Under cover of the privilege of obtaining timber and other material for the construction of right-of-way and land-grant railroads, large quantities of public timber have been cut and removed for export and sale. In his 1885 report, Sparks specifically mentions two corporations: the Sierra Lumber Company of California, and the Montana Improvement Company (MIC). In 1885, Sparks accused the MIC of cutting 45 million board feet from public lands, but the proceedings were dropped when the federal funds allocated to the case were exhausted. What followed was a convoluted series of transactions and corporate reorganizations-a pattern that has come to characterize the land grants evolution. The MIC, actually owned by principals of the Northern Pacific Railroad and Amalgamated Copper, went through a series of reorganizations. Amalgamated Copper itself, which purchased a million acres of NP grant land in Montana in 1907, was soon reorganized as Anaconda Copper. In 1993, the Northern Pacifics timber spin-off, Plum Creek Timber, bought back much of the Anaconda grant land (which had since been owned by ARCO and then by Champion International). Plum Creek Timber currently holds title to more than 1.5 million land grant acres in Montana, 90 percent of the timber industry land in the state. In 1885 and 1886, the two largest forfeitures were enacted by Congress: the Texas Pacific lost 15 million acres in New Mexico and Arizona, and the Atlantic amp Pacific lost 10 million acres along uncompleted roads in New Mexico and California. In March 1887, Congress directed the Department of Interior (DOI) to adjust all the railroad land grants, a process which until then had been up to the discretion of the DOI. If upon the GLOs calculation, it was found that railroads had too much land, they would be asked to relinquish it if they refused, the U. S. Attorney General was instructed to bring suit. In May 1887, the General Land Office (GLO) ordered railroads to show why their unselected indemnity lands should not be revoked, and in August 1887, the Interior Department restored 21,323,600 acres from the Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Oregon amp California, and other railroads to the public domain. But public lands reform had its limits. In 1886, Sparks had attempted but failed to cancel 1.5 million acres of the Northern Pacifics land grant in Washington State. Much of this land was soon purchased by the Weyerhaeuser timber syndicate. Sparks continued to push, but his limits were soon exceeded, in another case involving Weyerhaeuser. Sparks calculation that the Chicago, St. Paul (formerly St. Croix) Railroad had an excess of 406,684 acres was rejected by Interior Secretary Lucius Lamar, who ruled that the railroad had a right to indemnity for 200,000 acres. Sparks again clashed with Lamar in 1887, ending hopes of a threatened suit against Weyerhauser over title to North Wisconsin Railroad indemnity lands. Having pushed as far as Clevelands administration and the corporations would allow, the tension led to Sparks forced resignation in November 1887. Sparks departure, instigated by the future Secretary of the Interior William Vilas of Wisconsin, was covered by newspapers, which included descriptions of Vilas timber interests. Sparks is famous for being impetuous, for having an excitable disposition, and for his crusading fervor. Sparks blunt style can be found in the Congressional Record . and in his annual reports, which are full of stories about the bold, defiant, and persistent depredators on the public domain. His sympathies were clear: The rights of the corporations have been upheld. The defaults of the companies have been voluntary. The rights of the public are now to be considered - the right of the people to repossess themselves of their own. The case is not one calling for sympathy to the corporations it is one calling for justice to the people of the country. One historian has observed, During his three years in office Commissioner Sparks established a record practically unique in Land Office history. He attempted with considerable vigor to improve the methods, practices, and conditions of the Office. At times he blundered, but there is no question of his honesty. He worked with hope that he could secure Congressional assistance, but Congress only confronted him with additional handicaps. One wonders, given the legal and political atmosphere during the wholesale disposal of the public lands, and given the state of the General Land Office, if an effective reformer might not have blundered. Sparks honesty and willingness to act boldly were what the GLO most needed. Yet more than a century later, Sparks is still viewed from some quarters with condescension and ill feeling. During Sparks short tenure, Congress revested more than 28 million acres of railroad land grants, most of it from the Texas Pacific and Atlantic amp Pacific Railroads in New Mexico, Arizona and California. In August and December 1887, Interior Secretary Lamar had revoked 21 million acres in railroad land withdrawals and restored the lands to public entry. During President Clevelands administration, more than 81 million acres were (at least temporarily) restored to the public domain, land that had been seized, as Sparks put it, by illegal usurpation, improvident grants, and fraudulent claims and entries. But in the end, the value of the lands and resources made the transfer process impossible to control. Sparks removal from office in 1887 was followed by a backslide into frenzied patenting of public lands by corporations, guided by the cronyism of Interior and GLO executives, and covered up by the convenient disappearance of General Land Office records. The new GLO Commissioner explained in his annual report that he tried to make up for the delays Sparks had caused in transferring public lands to private ownership, claiming that the GLOs work had to be resumed so hastily that many of the records had disappeared because of bad ink. Interior Secretary William Vilas approved the speed-up in the work of the GLO, once issuing 3,633 patents in one week. His successor, John Noble, an attorney serving railroad, mining, and other large corporations in the Southwest, went even farther in speeding the patenting process, especially for timber cases, proving himself a true friend of the corporations dummy entrymen. GLO Commissioner Lewis Groff attacked Sparks reforms and did his best to downplay the fraud. By the height of the movement to revest railroad land grants, Congressmen were announcing that The great corporations and other monopolies have for many years been stretching out their strong and unscrupulous arms over the public lands remaining for enterprising and honest settlers. Millions of acres of this domain have been seized and stolen, and I have to say this robbery could not have succeeded without the collusion and cooperation of agents employed to protect the interests of the people. Immense combinations have been formed, including the ties of political and social life, for a common object-to break down all attempts at Washington to crush out a venal system which has flourished by departmental indifference or favor. But Congress steadfastly refused to improve the GLO, and the courts refused to enforce the laws. Open fraud by prominent figures, ignored by Congress and upheld by the courts, was accompanied by continued bribery and violence against government officials and witnesses. The Great Barbecue continued until there was little left. What was left, the Forest Reserves, had to be set aside by administrative order. The GLO was absorbed into the U. S. Bureau of Land Management in 1946, which continues to pass public land and timber to corporations. Congressional Committees and the Regulation of Railroads Several Congressional committees investigated the construction of railroads and the implementation of the land grant policy. The Credit Mobilier scandal of the mid-1870s has already been mentioned. In another investigation in 1887 and 1888, the U. S. Pacific Railway Commission investigated the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads, finding corruption, unpaid debts, missing funds, and missing receipts and other records. Other investigations, concerned with the ongoing operation of the railroads, led to the creation of the first regulatory agency: the Interstate Commerce Commission. In 1885 and 1886, the Senates Cullom Committee investigated various railroad abuses, including excessive and discriminatory rates, secret rebates, and manipulation of railroad company stock. The committees work led to the creation in 1887 of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for the regulation of railroad operations. However, the ICC was stacked with railroad men, and with their usual creativity and ruthlessness, the railroads managed to use the ICC to their advantage. In an 1892 letter to his friend Charles E. Perkins, president of the Chicago, Burlington amp Quincy Railroad, U. S. Attorney General Richard Olney wrote: The Commission, as its functions have now been limited by the courts, is, or can be made of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of railroads, at the same time that supervision is almost entirely nominal. Further, the older such a commission gets to be, the more inclined it will be found to take the business and railroad view of things. It thus becomes a sort of barrier between railroad corporations and the people and a sort of protection against hasty and crude legislation hostile to railroad interests. The part of wisdom is not to destroy the Commission but to utilize it. Period 3: 1887-1894: The Push for a General Forfeiture Act The organized push for general forfeiture legislation was softened by land grant defenders in the Senate, who succeeded in limiting the forfeitures to lands adjoining uncompleted portions of the railroads. From 1888, the real focus of Congress was on passage of a general forfeiture act which would deal with the almost 100 million acres of grant lands alongside railroads which had not been built on time. Various versions of general forfeiture legislation were pushed and compromised by land reformers, rival railroads, their stock and bondholders, and by their lobbyists and representatives in Congress. A triangle of interests sought various degrees of forfeiture of unearned land grants. Three members of the House Committee on Public Lands agreed with the Senates stance that 5,600,000 acres of lands adjoining uncompleted railroads should be forfeited. The majority on the Committee sought forfeiture of 54,000,000 acres of lands adjoining any portions of railroads not completed within their time limits. Two members sought the forfeiture of all 78,500,000 acres of the grant lands of railroads which had not been completed on time. Having sought revestment of grant lands for 20 years, U. S. Representative William Holman now argued against radical proposals which would doom the legislation, warning that endless litigation would result. The middle ground was approved by the House in a vote of 179 to 8, but it was rejected by the Senate. Holman neednt have feared a radical law that couldnt be enforced. The General Forfeiture Act which did pass in 1890 was the conservative Senates version of less than six million acres, which Holman charged was sponsored by the Northern Pacific Railroad itself in order to avoid a larger forfeiture. In fact, the Northern Pacific, having acquired the existing Oregon Railroad line along the Columbia River, did not intend to build another, and had given up any claims to the adjoining land. The General Forfeiture Act reclaimed only 5.6 million acres from eleven railroads, including the Northern Pacific (2,000,000 acres), the Southern Pacific (1,075,200 acres), the Gulf amp Ship Island (652,800 acres), and the Mobile and Girard (536,064 acres). The fight in Congress was not yet over. In 1892, with the Populist Party calling for the return of all land held by railroads and corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens, the House passed a bill which called for the recovery of all lands not earned within the time limits. The bills would have revested more than 50 million acres, but the Senate failed to act. The House passed a similar bill in 1894, even protecting innocent land purchasers by including an exemption for purchasers of less than 320 acres. The Senate again opposed the bill, with forfeiture opponent Dolph warning that vast interests, large farms, vast tracts of lands, the interests of the purchasers of the railroad companies. would be destroyed by further forfeitures. Of course, that was the point of forfeiture--to dismantle unintended empires. But Dolph represented powerful interests, and prevailed. Forfeiture historian Ellis marks 1894 as the end of the forfeiture movement, observing that the later forfeiture cases of the Oregon amp California and Northern Pacific Railroad grew out of special circumstances, and were different from the 1867-1890 forfeitures, which were based mainly upon the construction and time limit failures of the railroads. Period 4: 1908-1917: Oregon amp California Revestment The General Forfeiture Act of 1890 had marked the climax of forfeiture as a strategy to deal with the failures of the land grant policy. Later forfeitures, while large, concerned but two railroads whose failures were especially glaring: the Oregon amp California Railroad (by then a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific) and the Northern Pacific Railroad. The Oregon amp California forfeiture was preceded by the Oregon land fraud trials of 1903 to 1910. More than a thousand people were indicted, and more than 100 were convicted for defrauding the U. S. and Oregon state governments of land by forgery, perjury, falsification of records, bribery and intimidation of witnesses and officers of the courts, and obstructing free passages over public lands. Those indicted included the U. S. District Attorney, a General Land Office Commissioner and some of his agents, U. S. government surveyors, both U. S. Senators and a U. S. Representative from Oregon (including U. S. Senator Mitchell, who had been one of the staunch opponents of land grant forfeiture). Also indicted were Oregon State Senators, Assistant Attorneys for Oregon, city and county officials, and bankers, attorneys, lumber dealers, hotel owners, real estate agents, and stockbrokers. Wile convictions were relatively few, they were scandalously noteworthy, and resulted in the break-up of several land fraud rings, and in the repeal of the easily-abused lieu-land provisions of the Forest Reservation Act. The Oregon land fraud trials set the stage for a much larger case: that of the Oregon amp California Railroad. By 1908, the OampC, out of its grant of 3.7 million acres, had sold only 813,000 acres, and only 127,000 acres of that had been sold in parcels no greater than 160 acres, to actual settlers only, for no more than 2.50 per acre. The OampC had sold the other 700,000 acres, much of it to timber corporations, in violation of the law, in parcels of thousands or tens of thousands of acres, at prices up to 10 per acre. And in 1903, the OampC (by then a subsidiary of Harrimans Southern Pacific) announced that it would sell no more land at all. Investigators sent by President Roosevelt ended up on railroad and timber payrolls. Roosevelt eventually turned to Gifford Pinchot, who sent U. S. attorney Francis Heney, who successfully prosecuted some of the principals. After a series of Congressional acts and court decisions between 1908 and 1918, the Oregon amp California Railroad forfeited 2,900,000 acres. The revested acreage was transferred to the GLOs successor agency, the U. S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which sold most of the timber to corporations over the next fifty years. The OampC revestment set several important precedents. One was that railroads were not entitled to be rewarded for their speculation: with the backing of the U. S. Supreme Court, the railroad was paid only the 2.50 per acre it was supposed to have received. Another part of the revestiture proved quite agreeable to the purchasers of the railroads lands. In 1912, Congress passed the Forgiveness (or Innocent Purchasers) Act, which allowed purchasers of OampC parcels of more than 1,000 acres to keep the lands if they paid the U. S. government the 2.50 per acre originally required. Smaller purchasers werent required to pay at all. Period 5: 1924-1940: The Battle for the Northern Pacific The Northern Pacific Railroad received the largest of all land grants. Running across the northern tier from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound, the NP eventually claimed almost 40 million acres. In the size of its land grant, but also in its violations, controversies, investigations, and lawsuits, the Northern Pacific had no peers. In 1886, General Land Office Commissioner Sparks restored to the public domain 1.5 million acres of Northern Pacific grant land grant in western Washington, declaring that the 1870 amendments to the original 1864 NP legislation did not clearly and unequivocally grant additional land. Although House and Senate reports in 1884 recommended forfeiture of the NPs grant along the Columbia River, and there was a proposal in Congress to forfeit the Northern Pacific Railroads Cascade line, Sparks order was reversed by Interior Secretary Lamar in 1887. In 1888, a H. R. 9151, which would have forfeited three-quarters of the NP land grant, was passed without debate, but the Senate refused to act upon it. The Western Washington land remained under the control of the NP, and soon became the basis for Weyerhaeusers vast timber holdings in the Northwest. Instead, the 1890 General Forfeiture Act reclaimed only the two million acres of unearned NP land along the Columbia River, leaving most of the grant lands in control of the railroad. In the next two decades, the NP sold millions of acres to timber and mining corporations, including Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade, Potlatch, and Amalgamated Copper (later named Anaconda Copper). In 1905, the Northern Pacific had filed a claim for 5,600 acres within the Gallatin National Forest. In 1915, the GLO, having realized its error in issuing the patents, filed suit against the NP, but the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1921 that the government could not deny land claims that fell within forest reserves. The U. S. attorneys who worked on that case were soon brought in for a much larger job: investigating the entire 40-million-acre Northern Pacific land grant. Joint Congressional hearings were held from 1924 to 1928, detailing dozens of violations by the Northern Pacific Railroad, ranging from failure to sell the grant lands at public auction, diverting construction funds to non-rail purposes such as timber, mining, and real estate speculation, failure to sell stock to the public as required, tax evasion, and fraudulent classification of land. In 1929, Congress acted upon the Joint Committees recommendations by revoking NPs claims to another 2,900,000 acres lying within National Forests in Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, and directing the U. S. Attorney General to file suit against the railroad in order to have a complete judicial accounting and determination of any and all issues arising out of violations of the Northern Pacific land grant. Twenty-two charges were brought by the U. S. against the railroad. A complex ten-year case followed, with rulings by special masters, federal district courts, and the U. S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court left several major charges undecided, and the entire case was ended with a settlement between the railroad and the Attorney General. Northern Pacific agreed to pay the U. S. 300,000 and lost its claims to 2.9 million acres, but retained 39 million acres of land. 1941: The Railroads Release Further Claims Between 1867 and 1940, more than forty million acres of railroad grant land had been forfeited. On the eve of World War II, the railroads and the federal government had another concern: the requirement that the land grant railroads haul military freight at reduced rates. The U. S. Board of Investigation and Research, created by the Transportation Act of 1940, concluded that the ending of land grant rail rate concessions should be a two-way street, with the railroads returning their remaining lands to the government. So in 1941, with their eye on wartime profits, the land grant railroads released further claims on eight million acres, in exchange for being released from reduced rates for government freight. More than half of the acreage released was by the Northern Pacific, which surrendered 4,500,000 acres of additional claims. The Boards investigation provided the following list: Table 3. Patented Railroad Grant Lands in 1941 Atlantic Coast Line The Accomplishments and Failures of Forfeiture Law professor John Leshy has summarized the problems in the land grant policy, and of the attempts of Congress and the courts to address those problems. His conclusions are quoted at length because he is currently the Solicitor of the U. S. Department of Interior. Litigation has been. ineffective, even though the courts continued to acknowledge that the intent of Congress has been thwarted. In one celebrated instance arising shortly after the turn of the century, the United States sought to enforce a proviso of the OampC railroad grant, charging that the railroad grantee had retained most of the granted land and sold the rest of it in violation of the statutory size and price limits. After the Supreme Court agreed, Congress enacted legislation which revested title to the unsold lands in the United States but which, significantly, ignored those lands the railroad had previously sold to third parties in quantities or at prices exceeding the terms of the grants. Moreover, in taking back title to the unsold lands, the United States paid the railroad grantee the price the latter would have received if it had complied with the restriction by selling to settlers. Thus, even in this exceptional situation, which gave birth to the so-called OampC lands in western Oregon, purchasers from the railroad were fully protected despite their lack of bona fides . and the railroad suffered no actual penalty from its breach. Apart from this almost unique case, the restrictions in the railroad grants turned out to be largely unenforceable and ineffective. A basic problem was in the language of the grants: for example, the restrictions were not clearly labeled as covenants or conditions (a legally significant distinction), failed to set out a clear mechanism for transferring the land to settlers, and were silent both on remedies for violation and on their enforceability by the courts at the initiative of either the executive branch or potential settlers. These ambiguities eventually resulted in a series of Supreme Court decisions--such as the one allowing railroads to shield themselves from the duty to sell the lands simply by mortgaging them--which largely negated the restrictions. After years of wrangling, Congress and the executive branch together finally washed their hands of the matter on the eve of World War II. This is not to say that congressional attempts to include these restrictions were totally frustrated indeed, some of the land subject to the restrictions passed from railroad ownership, and small parcels actually were sold cheaply to those bona fide settlers Congress apparently intended to benefit. But even today railroads own large acreages that had been subject to these restrictions, and undeniably disposed of some of their grant lands in large tracts, at higher than statutory process, to other than actual settlers, all in contradiction of the ostensible purpose of Congress. The fact that some of the granted lands actually ended up in the hands of the intended secondary beneficiaries seems more coincidental than not. Was the public interest served by subsidizing the transcontinental railroads with public land grants Historians have argued convincingly that not only would the land grant railroads have been built without subsidies, but that the land grant railroads actually delayed settlement of the West. In the nineteenth century, the opening and settling of the West was widely assumed to be a public good bordering on absolute necessity. But it clearly benefited some more than others, and the wisdom of the land grant policy was ferociously debated even at the time. Another issue is the size of the land grants. Author Lloyd Mercer, who spent years analyzing the land grant subsidies, did his best to show that they were a profitable deal for the public, but he didnt factor in the billion of dollars worth of real estate, timber, coal, oil, gold, and other resources in his calculations. He also stopped his calculations at the year 1900, using turn of the century land values and rates of return. Even so, he concluded that the Northern Pacific grant was particularly excessive. The public (i. e. the settlers) should hardly have been secondary beneficiaries, as Leshy describes them. Yet the public has participated in its own defrauding. It is time for the public, through its representatives in Congress, to right the wrongs of a century. The Northern Pacific Empire Builder James Hill dismissed the controversies, claiming that When we are all dead and gone the sun will still shine, the rain will fall, and this railroad will run as usual. He may have been right about that. But as usual turns out to mean that the sun shines on deforested hillsides, and the rain falls in torrents and landslides, and trains are frequently derailed because of inadequate safety and manpower. The country can do better with its public lands and with its rail system. Perhaps a more realistic estimate has come from public lands scholars George Coggins and Charles Wilkinson: It is not necessary to chronicle fully the splendid indifference to the common public good in the matter of transcontinental railroads. When the Great Barbecue was over, Congress had given over 90 million acres to the railroads directly and another 35-40 million acres to states to be used by the railroads (in addition to another 200 million acres for other internal improvements, some of which were also granted to railroads). The progress of the first transcontinental line the Union Pacific and Central Pacific is somewhat typical of the problems generated. The Gilded Age was one of the low points of public morality in the United States, but its effects were not uniformly bad. As promoters, the railroads encouraged and directed immigration. The West was developed, and towns sprang up in the railroads wake. Opposition to the worst abuses was noteworthy and led to some worthwhile reforms. The railroad enterprise effectively ended the frontier. Pressure to force return of the railroad lands to the public domain has continued all through this century and has not yet died out completely. Nor will it, as long as the lands are controlled by corporations to the detriment of local communities, the public, and the land itself. As historian Fred Shannon wrote in 1946, If any lobbying is justifiable today it should be from a peoples lobby. It should demand that after three-quarters of a century (in some cases almost a century) of private profit from public gifts, it is now time for the people to take back the property without further recompense, so that in the future the benefits shall be reaped by the people who paid. Any reimbursement to the people made by the land-grant railroads such as reduced rates for government freight, to the present, has been just a little interest on the original obligation. The Land Grant Legacy Lives On The railroads and their defenders continue to claim that the land grant era ended in 1941. For example, railroad lobbyist Frank Wilner has argued that both Congress and the federal courts have ruled that the books have been closed on the matter of past railroad land grants. Many legal scholars disagree, and the U. S. Supreme Court itself, in the OampC revestment case, declared that the land grant laws are covenants, and enforceable. The grants must be taken as they were given. Assent to them was required and made. The acts are laws as well as grants and must be given the exactness of laws. This comment applies to and answers all the other contentions of the railroad company based on waiver, acquiescence and estoppel and even to the defenses of laches and the statute of limitations. Regardless of the pronouncements of railroad men, lobbyists, and judges, the land grant legacy clearly lives on, as can be seen by examining todays socioeconomic and environmental controversies in newspaper headlines, Congressional hearings, citizens petitions for return of the grant lands, land exchanges involving land grant checkerboards, and other efforts to address the continuing problems deriving from the land grant legacy. The days of robber barons, open fraud, and railroad wars are not over. The heirs to the land grant empires continue their control of the land, and their political influence. Timber and mining corporations which acquired railroad grant lands use their wealth to defeat state referendums for forest protection, to forward their own legislative proposals which give them access to additional public lands and exempt them from environmental laws, to squeeze independent companies out of business, and to price-gouge consumers, and to export forests and jobs. Citizen Pressure, Agency Hearings and Investigations As in the nineteenth century, the public pushes regulators, Congress, and the courts to understand and resist the political power of the land grant corporations. In 1972, the National Coalition for Land Reform (NCLR) filed a Petition for Return of Railroad Lands as an administrative complaint to the Secretary of the Interior. The petition asked the Secretary to investigate the status of the land grant-based corporations and their noncompliance with the law, an investigation which the petitioners were convinced should result in forfeiture or sale of the remaining grant lands, and reimbursement to the public treasury of profits derived from illegal exploitation of the grant lands. The Secretarys rejection of the petition was filed on August 31, 1972, on behalf of the Southern Pacific Transportation and Southern Pacific Land Company. A few years later, the non-profit Center for Balanced Transportation (CBT) urged Congress to conduct oversight hearings into the Interior Departments handling of the NCLRs land grant petition. The CBT, whose work encompassed national and state transportation and energy issues, had conducted historical and legal analyses of the Northern Pacific land grant, concluding that the policy had failed, but that Congress could still address the problems. In the early 1980s, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, backed by the National Grange, the National Farmers Organization, the American Farm Bureau, and the National Wheat Growers Association, called for congressional investigation into the obligation of the land grant railroads to use their land grant income to sustain and strengthen rail operations and the extent to which the carriers have breached their contracts with the government by transferring land grant assets out of the railroad without adequate compensation. Unhitching the Grants, Exploiting the Land In the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of a complex web of events, including the depletion of public lands resources, declining railroad profits, and railroad deregulation, many of the land grant railroads spun-off their land grant resources into new, independent corporations. The railroad mergers and restructuring inspired protest from rival transportation systems, railroad employees, citizens, and a new wave of hearings and studies by state and federal governments. The U. S. Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) conducted several studies on railroad mergers and holding companies. Its 1977 study on Railroad Conglomerates and Other Corporate Structures showed that land, natural resources, and other valuable assets (assets acquired over the years by government grant) had been diverted from the railroads transportation purposes and had diminished railroad revenues. The railroad as an instrument of public service has been deprived of wealth accumulated over many years, including resources such as land grants provided at public expense. The ICC concluded that the interests of conglomerate managements and their stockholders often diverge from the public interest in a sound transportation system, and that the continuation of asset separation poses a potential threat to the future health of the Nations rail system. In 1982, U. S. Representative Byron Dorgan (D-SD) initiated a Congressional investigation of railroads by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Dorgan claimed that the Interstate Commerce Commission has adopted such a narrow view of its authority regarding rail holding companies and land grants. that it is doing virtually nothing to protect the public in these areas. This is why the ball is in the Congress court. It does not seem fair to expect our taxpayers to provide additional subsidies, and our shippers and merchants to pay exorbitant freight rates, while rail managements turn to other uses the subsidies they have already received. Nor does it seem fair to permit these managements to use the holding companies device to walk away from the bargain with the American people regarding the railroad land grants. Joint Congressional Committee hearings requested by Dorgan and Representative Pat Williams (D-MT) were followed by a bill introduced by Williams that would require all land grant railroads (or their holding companies) to put a third of their pre-tax profits from resource extraction into railroad maintenance. Williams declared that Congress must decide whether the public still has a right to demand service from the railroads as a result of the enormous grants of land they received in the 1880s. In 1980, U. S. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested that the Interstate Commerce Commission condition approval of the proposed merger of the Union Pacific, Missouri Pacific, and Western Pacific Railroads upon a study of the value of their land grants and mineral rights. Dingell wrote that it is unacceptable to have government aid diverted from its main objective of benefiting the ultimate public which the railroads serve. The next year, U. S. Representative Sieberling (D-OH), also concerned about the transfer of land grant assets to non-rail corporations, requested that the ICC continue its investigations of the effects of railroad holding companies which then spun off land grant assets to separate corporations. Calls for the investigation of railroad holding companies and land grant spin-offs also came from railroad employees and rival transportation systems. For example, the Water Transport Association claimed that the revenues and profits from land grant resources should be included when determining how much railroads should be allowed to charge for service. Additional challengers to Burlington Northern Railroads move to create a holding company for land grant assets included the Western Coal Traffic League, the State of Minnesota, BN employees, and a citizens group. In 1982 hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Railway Labor Executives Association expressed concern over the reduction of railroad plant and rail labor jobs due to the stripping of assets. The Western Coal Traffic League (utilities and industries) supported legislative initiatives to prevent the milking of the Burlington Northern Railroad of its resource assets, including its land grant assets. Congressman Pat Williams of Montana claimed that the land grant assets should come into play. BN ought to call upon some of its remaining land grant properties as a source of revenue with which to upgrade railroad lines in Montana. Continuation of service on the lines may or may not be profitable, but will be a public service, and public service was the intent of the land grants. Not surprisingly, Richard Bressler, the CEO of Burlington Northern, testified that his corporation did not recognize any continuing obligations, but hearings chairman Senator Max Baucus said I believe the federal government should determine once and for all whether the land grants created a continuing obligation for rail carriers to provide rail service. The conclusions of these hearings were backed by Congressional Research Service studies which reiterated the continuing obligations of the railroads, and the duty of Congress to determine just what those obligations were. Land Buy-Outs: Buying Back Public Land Though the grant lands were supposed to be sold to settlers, generally at 2.50 per acre, much of the land was held by the railroads or sold in large parcels to other corporations. Under the rationale that the public needs green space, some of the corporations are now selling the grant lands back to the public--at hundreds or thousands of dollars per acre. Table 4. Land Grant Sales to Public Agencies Every year, there are dozens of land exchanges around the country. Originally used as a way to deal with small private inholdings within public lands, in recent years the exchanges have become much larger, often encompassing tens of thousands of acres. Many of the land exchanges now being arranged involve the land grant checkerboards. Exchanges are a politically palatable way to consolidate the fragmented public-private land ownership patterns created by the railroad land grants. But in the process, public lands are being exchanged for land that had already been donated to the railroads--in effect, a second public land grant. Timber corporations, real estate brokers, and others are misusing the land exchange process in order to speculate for quick profits. Improper procedures, conflicts of interest, and bribery in connection with various land exchanges have led to four audits of the BLM and several ongoing investigations of the U. S. Forest Service. An investigative series on the abuses and problems with the land exchanges was published in the Seattle Times in 1998. The authors recommended several reforms, including (1) that exchange lands should be traded lands to the highest bidder, rather than to the corporation which suggests a deal (2) the land appraisals should be made public and (3) the public should be given a seat at the negotiating table. Many of the grassroots citizens groups which have arisen to monitor corporate-government land exchanges, including the Seattle-based Western Land Exchange Project, agree with these recommendations, and are working to expose land exchange abuses, and to ensure that reforms will take place. The land exchanges give a century-old court decision new relevancy: It seems but an ill return for the generosity of the Government in granting these railroads half its lands to claim that it thereby incidentally granted them the benefit of the whole. The names and faces of land grant reformers have changed, and the current issues may seem unique. But the goals and visions of the Farmers Alliances, the Populists, the conservationists, and all the others who have fought for democracy are alive. Their work to mitigate and reform the land grant policy continues, as it has for more than a century. What is missing from the scene today is an informed, aroused movement to revest the land grants themselves. An opinion poll during World War II showed that only half of the population had ever heard of the railroad land grants, and most of them thought the railroads had paid for the land. Since then, another half-century has passed, and the land grants have an even smaller place in our social memory. Without an awareness of the past, and an understanding of how it affects the present, we will continue to suffer the continuing impacts of the land grant legacy. Most of the recent attempts to correct or mitigate the problems unleashed by the railroad land grant policy are well-intentioned and necessary. They are also symptomatic treatments which do not address the underlying problem: a bad policy poorly implemented. As land reformer Sheldon Greene clearly stated, The economic interests of large landowners and railroads have prevented a broad-based distribution of public lands without proper regard for the public interest. Although 70 years now a century have passed since the bulk of our public lands were transferred to private ownership, the original distributive goal of the land laws remains unfulfilled. Yet, despite the lapse of time, it is still realistic to seek to attain this objective. As William Faulkner once wrote, history isnt dead its not even past. It is time to revisit the land grant era, an era which never ended. Its time to revest the land back to the public. The era of selling public lands to settlers is long over, but corporate control of land and resources has never been stronger than today. And the public lands have never been more in need of protection. Applegate, Rick. 1979. An Unintended Empire: A Case Study Of Rail Land Holdings . Pages 100-240 in: Additions to the National Wilderness Preservation System, hearings before the Subcommittee on Public Lands of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, 96th Congress, 1st Session on H. R. 3928, held in Washington DC on Sept. 17, 1979. and oversights on land ownership in the Beaverhead and Gallatin National Forests, hearing held in Bozeman, Montana, Oct. 4, 1979. Serial No. 96-11, Part IV. Backiel, Adela and Pamela Baldwin. 1986. Public Access Across Private Lands to Federal Lands . Washington, DC: US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, April 7, 1986. Baldwin, Pamela. 1981. A Legal Analysis of the Land Grants of the Northern Pacific Railroad . Washington, DC: American Law Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Oct. 19, 1981. 40 p. Bederman, David J. 1988. The Imagery of Injustice at Mussel Slough: Railroad Land Grants, Corporation Law, and the Great Conglomerate West. Western Legal History 1(2): 237-269. Brown, Dee. 1977. Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: Railroads in the West . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977. Carstenson, Vernon, ed. 1963. The Public Lands . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Coggins, George and Charles Wilkinson. Federal Public Land and Resources Law . 2nd edition, Mineola, New York: Foundation Press, 1987. Conover, Milton. The General Land Office: Its History, Activities and Organization . Baltimore, 1923. Crawford, Jay B. 1890. The Credit Mobilier of America . Crawford, T. C. 1885. The Great Land Steals. New York World . May 23, 1885, pp. 1-2. Creedy, John A. 1983. Why a Congressional Investigation of the Rail Land Grants. ICC Practitioners Journal . Jan-Feb 1983, 50(2):156-162. Donaldson, Thomas. 1884. The Public Domain: Its History, With Statistics . 47th Cong. 2d sess. House Misc. Document No. 45, Pt. 4, Serial 2158. Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office. Dunham, Harold H. Biography of W. A.J. Sparks in Dictionary of American Biography . edited by Dumas Malone, New York, 1928-1937, vol. XVII, pp. 434-435. Dunham, Harold H. 1937. Some Crucial Years of the General Land Office, 1875-1890. Agricultural History . 11: 117-141. Dunham, Harold H. 1941. Government Handout: a Study in the Administration of the Public Lands, 1875-1891 . Grasmere, New York. Ellis, David Maldwyn. 1939. The Forfeiture of Railroad Land Grants . MA thesis, Cornell University. Ellis, David Maldwyn. 1945. Railroad Land Grant Rates, 1850-1945. Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics . March 1945, 21: 207-227. Ellis, David Maldwyn. 1946. Comment on The Railroad Land Grant Legend in American History Texts by Robert S. Henry. Mississippi Valley Historical Review . 1946, 32: 557-563. Reprinted in Carstenson. Ellis, David Maldwyn. 1946. The Forfeiture of Railroad Land Grants, 1867-1894. Mississippi Valley Historical Review . June 1946, 33(1): 27-60. Ellis, David Maldwyn. 1948. The Oregon and California Railroad Land Grant 1866-1945. Pacific Northwest Quarterly . Oct. 1948, 39(4): 253-283. Also published in Gates, 1979. Fellmeth, Robert. 1970. The Interstate Commerce Omission: The Public Interest and the ICC . Grossman Publishers. Frederick, David C. 1991. Railroads, Robber Barons, and the Saving of Stanford University. Western Legal History . 1941, 4(2): 224-256. Fries, Robert F. 1951. Empire in Pine: the Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin, 1830-1900 . Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1951. Gates, Paul W. 1934. The Illinois Central Railroad and its Colonization Work . Cambridge, Mass. Gates, Paul Wallace. 1936. The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System. American Historical Review . July 1936, 41: 662. Gates, Paul Wallace. 1942. The Role of the Land Speculator in Western Development. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography . July 1942, 46: 314-333. Gates, Paul Wallace. 1943. The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University: a Study in Land Policy and Absentee Ownership . Ithaca, New York, 1943. Gates, Paul Wallace. 1945. Frontier Landlords and Pioneer Tenants . Ithaca, New York, 1945. Gates, Paul Wallace. 1954. The Railroad Land Grant Legend. Journal of Economic History . Spring 1954, 14(2): 143-146. Gates, Paul Wallace. 1968. History of Public Land Law Development . Washington, DC: Public Land Law Review Commission, Nov. 1968. Gates, Paul Wallace, editor. 1979. Public Land Policies: Management and Disposal . New York: Arno Press. George, Henry. 1868. What the Railroad Will Bring Us. Overland Monthly . Oct. 1868, 1(4). Goetz, James H. 1979. The Feasibility of Legal andor Legislative Recourse to Remedy Violations of the Provisions of the Northern Pacific Land Grant . Memo to Rick Applegate, Director, Center for Balanced Transportation. Bozeman, MT: Goetz amp Madden, Feb. 5, 1979. 114 p. Goodwyn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America . Oxford University Press, 1978. Greene, Sheldon David Kirkpatrick David M. Madway and Richard Pearl. 1975. Petition for Return of Railroad Lands. Pages 12-16 in: The Peoples Land: A Reader on Land Reform in the United States . edited by Peter Barnes. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1975. Greene, Sheldon. 1976. Promised Land: A Contemporary Critique of Distribution of Public Land by the United States. Ecology Law Quarterly 5: 707-751. Hassler, Charles W. 1876. Railroad Rings and Their Relation to the Railroad Question in this Country . New York, 1876. Hidy, Ralph W. Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins. 1963. Timber and Men: the Weyerhaeuser Story . New York: The Macmillan Co. Ise, John. 1920. The United States Forest Policy . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jensen, Derrick, George Draffan, and John Osborn. 1995. Railroads and Clearcuts: Legacy of Congresss 1864 Northern Pacific Railroad Land Grant . Spokane, WA: Inland Empire Public Lands Council and Keokee Company Publishng, 1995. Jones, Robert Bradley. 1973. One by One: A Documented Narrative Based Upon the History of the Oregon amp California Railroad Land Grant in the State of Oregon . Marylhurst Ore.: The Source Magazine, Inc. 1973. Julian, George Washington. 1879. Atlantic Monthly 43: 325-337. Julian, George Washington. 1883. Railway Influence in the Land Office. North American Review, 136: 237-256. Kolko, Gabriel. 1965. Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916 . New York: Princeton. Republished in 1970 by W. W. Norton amp Co. Le Duc, Thomas. 1950. The Disposal of the Public Domain on the Trans-Mississippi Plains: Some Opportunities for Investigation. Agricultural History. July 1950, 24(3): 199-204. Leshy, John D. 1984. Sharing Federal Multiple-Use Lands: Historic Lessons and Speculations for the Future. Chapter 11 in Rethinking the Federal Lands . edited by Sterling Brubaker. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1984. Long, James. 1993. Of Grants And Greed. Oregonian . May 23, 1993. Mercer, Lloyd J. 1982. Railroads and the Land Grant Policy: A Study in Government Intervention . New York: Academic Press. Messing, John. 1966. Public Lands, Politics, and Progressives: The Oregon Land Fraud Trials, 1903-1910. Pacific Historical Review . Feb. 1966, 35(1): 35-66. Mickeleson, Siegfried. 1940. Promotional Activities of the Northern Pacific Railroads Land and Immigration Departments, 1870 to 1902 . M. A. Thesis, Dept. of History, University of Minnesota. Published in 1993 as The Northern Pacific Railroad and the Selling of the West: A Nineteenth-Century Public Relations Venture . Sioux Falls, SD: Center for Western Studies, Augustana College, 1993. Morgan, Charles S. 1946. Problems in the Appraisal of the Railroad Land Grants. Mississippi Valley Historical Review . 1946, 33(3): 443-454. Nelson, Deborah, Jim Simon, Eric Nalder, and Danny Westneat. 1998. Trading Away the West: How the Public is Losing Trees, Land and Money. Seattle Times special report, Sept. 27-Oct. 2, 1998. Nevins, Allan. Grover Cleveland . Paxson, F. L. 1908. The Pacific Railroads and the Disappearance of the Frontier in America. American Historical Association, Annual Report . 1907, 1: 105-118. Petulla, Joseph M. 1977. American Environmental History: The Exploitation and Conservation of Natural Resources . San Francisco: Boyd amp Fraser, 1977. Porter, Kirk. 1924. National Party Platforms . New York. Puter, S. A.D. and Horace Stevens. 1908. Looters of the Public Domain . Portland: The Portland Printing House. Rae, John Bell. 1936. The Development of Railway Land Subsidy Policy in the United States . Ph. D. dissertation, Brown University. New York: Arno Press, 1979. Rae, John Bell. 1938. Commissioner Sparks and the Railroad Land Grants. Mississippi Valley Historical Review . Sept. 1938: 25: 211-230. Railway Age. 1944. Railroads Popular, Their Ills Ignored. Railway Age . Dec. 9, 1944, pp. 888-889. Robbins, Roy M. 1976. Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1970 . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2nd ed. Root, Thomas E. 1987. Railroad Land Grants from Canals to Transcontinentals: 1808 to 1941 . American Bar Association Natural Resources Law Section Monograph Series No. 4. Published by the Section of Natural Resources Law, American Bar Association, and The National Energy Law amp Policy Institute, University of Tulsa College of Law, Dec. 1987. Schwinden, Theodore. 1950. The Northern Pacific Land Grants in Congress . M. A. thesis, Montana State University. Chapter 4, The Attempts to Forfeit the Northern Land Grants, and Chapter 5, The Final Adjustment of the Northern Pacific Land Grants. Seattle (Weekly) Post-Intelligencer . Feb. 4, 1886. Seattle (Weekly) Post-Intelligencer. 1886 Under a Black Cloud: The Shadow of the Land Grant in Washington Territory: The Domain of The Railroad Barons in a Future State of the American Republic: What Remains for the Settler and Home Builder Unearned Land Granted to Railroad Corporations Shannon, Fred A. The Farmers Last Frontier . Shannon, Fred A. 1946. Comment on The Railroad Land Grant Legend in American History Texts. Mississippi Valley Historical Review . March 1946, 32(4): 572-574. Reprinted in Carstenson, 1963. Sparks, William Andrew Jackson. Annual Reports of the U. S. General Land Office . 1885, 1886, 1887. Steen, Harold K. The U. S. Forest Service: A History . University of Washington Press, 1991. Swisher, Carl Brent. 1930. Stephen J. Field: Craftsman of the Law . University of Chicago Press. Toole, K. Ross and Edward Butcher. 1968. Timber Depredations on the Montana Public Domain, 1885-1918. Journal of the West . July 1968, 7: 351-362. Traffic World. 1981. Rail Subsidy Showdown Emerging from Century-Old U. S. Land Grants. Traffic World . June 8, 1981, p.18-19. U. S. Board of Investigation and Research. 1944. Land Grants to Railroads and Related Rates: A Report Submitted to the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce with Reference to H. R. 4184 . Washington, DC, March 1944. U. S. Board of Investigation and Research. 1945. Public Aids to Domestic Transportation . 79th Cong. 1st Sess, House Document No. 159. (Published Sept. 1944). U. S. Bureau of Corporations. 1913-1914. The Lumber Industry . Pt. 1, Standing Timber. Pt. 2, Concentration of Timber Ownership in Important Selected Regions. Pt. 3, Land Holdings of Large Timber Owners. Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office. U. S. Bureau of Land Management, 1986. Public Lands Statistics 1986 . Washington, DC: Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Lands Management. U. S. Congress, House. 1886 . Land Grant Forfeiture Resolution by Representative Herman . 49th Cong. 1st sess. H. Misc. Doc. no. 169. Mar. 22, 1886. U. S. Congress, House. 1886. Resolution re NP land grant. 49th Cong. 1st sess. H. Misc. Doc. no. 193. Mar. 29, 1886. U. S. Congress, House. 1924. Joint Resolution Directing the Secretary of Interior to Withhold His Approval of the Adjustment of the NP Land Grants, and for Other Purposes. 68th Cong. 1st sess. H. J. Res. 183. U. S. Congress, House. 1924. Northern Pacific Land Grants. H. J. Res. 237. Congressional Record 65: 7040. April 21, 1924. U. S. Congress, House. Committee on Public Lands. 1878. House Reports, 45 Cong. 2 Sess. No. 911 . U. S. Congress, House. Committee on Public Lands. 1884. Forfeited Grants Northern Pacific Railroad: Report to accompany bill H. R. 6534. 48th Cong. 1st Sess. House Report. 1256. U. S. Congress, House. Committee on Public Lands. 1886. Forfeited Grants to Northern Pacific Railroad: Report to accompany bill H. R. 147. 48th Cong. 1st Sess. House Report. 1226. U. S. Congress, Senate. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. 1944. Repeal of Land-Grant Rates on Transportation of Government Traffic . Hearings before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 78 Cong. 2 Sess. 1944. U. S. Congress, Senate. Committee on Public Lands. 1884. Report to Accompany Bill S.2036 forfeiture of unearned lands granted to NP. 48th Cong. 1st sess. S. Rep. No. 804. U. S. Congress, Senate. Committee on Railroads. 1880. Views of the Minority to accompany bill S.82, on land grants of the Northern Pacific Railroad. 46th Cong. 2d sess. S. Misc. Doc. 80. U. S. Congress, Senate. Resolution on forfeiture of land grants. 51st Cong. 1st sess. Sept. 10, 1890. U. S. Congress. Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Northern Pacific Railroad Land Grants. 1924-1928. Hearings, The Northern Pacific land grants, 1924-1928 . U. S. Govt. Printing Office. 15 parts. SuDocs No. Y4.N81:H35pt. no. U. S. Congressional Record . 70th Cong. 2nd Sess. House, pp. 3995, 4640-4641, 4820-4821, and 5118-5122. U. S. Federal Coordinator of Transportation. Land Grants, Contributions, Loans, and Other Aids to Railroads . U. S. Federal Coordinator of Transportation. Public Aids to Transportation . Washington, DC. 4 vols, 1938-1940. U. S. Interstate Commerce Commission. 1969. Conglomerate Merger Activity of Class I Railroads and Related Regulatory Problems . U. S. ICC, Bureau of Economics, March 1969. U. S. Interstate Commerce Commission. 1970. Conglomerate Merger Studies . Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office. U. S. Interstate Commerce Commission. 1977. Railroad Conglomerates and Other Corporate Structures: A Report to Congress as Directed by Section 903 of the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 . Washington DC: U. S. GPO, Feb. 5, 1977. 82 p. appendices. U. S. Pacific Railway Commission. 1887-1888. Reports and Testimony . 50th Cong. 1st Sess. Exec. Doc. 51. Walker, Donald C. 1993. Feds Defy History, Usurp Counties Funds: OampC Millions Belong to Descendents of Those Who Settle in Oregon. Oregonian . June 22, 1993. Weiss, Marianne E. 1939. The Movement to End the Land Grants to Railroads . Masters thesis, Cornell University. Weimer, Douglas Reid. 1983. Title to Land Grants of the Former Northern Pacific Railroad . American Law Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Aug. 4, 1983. Wilner, Frank N. 1981. History and Evolution of Railroad and Grants. ICC Practitioners Journal . Sept-Oct. 1981, 48(6): 687-699. Yard, R. S. 1928. Our Federal Lands . New York. Yonce, Frederick J. 1969. Public Land Disposal in Washington . Ph. D. dissertation. Seattle: University of Washington. Yonce, Frederick J. 1978. Lumbering and the Public Timberlands in Washington: The Era of Disposal. Journal of Forest History . Jan. 1978, 22(1): 4-17.