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LOCAL TAXATION IN COPENHAGEN. 55 fire insurance was made compulsory on all property owners. Two companies were given special privileges and charged with the work of insurance, the valuation of properties for the pur- pose being made according to instructions to which the com­ panies and their clients alike had no option but to conform. Hence the insurance value of properties means something very delinite, and was and is used as the basis of a communal tax. The compulsory insurance has been abandoned, but, as less than 5 per cent of the levy in aid of the fire brigade comes from properties not insured with one of the said two companies or insufficiently insured as judged by the rules of valuation on which they work, the cessation of compulsion has left the business of the companies but little affected. The insurance value of the property insured stood at about £35,000,000 in 1898, having doubled in twenty years. One other small item of tax income may be noticed before passing to the principal sources of revenue. It is a charge of 2|d. ner square yard of Street in front of any building. Each house-owner is required to pay at this rate for the area obtained by multiplying the length of his buildings along the Street by one-half the width of the Street. The income from. this source is between £5,000 and £6,000 per annum only. The tax only fails on property lying in the part of the city within the old line of ramparts. . . Three principal taxes remain. The first is the so-called land tax, which is only such in a small degree. In the middle of the last century the tax was really proportioned to the then value of the land. Half a century later an addition to it was made by levying an equal amount for each 10,000 kroner of insurance value of buildings to that placed on 160 kroner’s value (according to the old valuation) of land. In the middle of the present century the extension of the city beyond its old limits led to imposing the tax there also. Property not built on and property with buildings upon it are taxed so that 6,000 kroner in value of the former pays the same as 10,000 kroner in value of the latter. Vacant land is valued in accordance with