Hood River County officials are studying proposals at the state level to revive the Timber Severance Tax.  One that received a hearing in the Legislature recently would be a five percent tax on all harvested timber to go to wildfire fighting, forest research projects, and local jurisdictions.  But County Commission Chair Mike Oates says it’s difficult to tell if the County could benefit from this tax by what they would gain through sales on private land, or could lose because of having to pay it on sales from the County’s own forestlands.  Oates says the County needs to do the math to determine that.  Private timber owners in Oregon paid a severance tax on the value of the trees they logged until the 1990s, when lawmakers passed a series of tax cuts.