ABSTRACT
‘User fees’ are the fiscal panacea of the 1990s. The employment of ʼnon-tax revenue enhancement’ has become popular with politicians of both major parties as a potential cure for the federal deficit, which sometimes refers more generally to the goal of somehow spending more while taxing less – meaning less tax revenue, not merely lower tax rates. For many years, the idea that revenue can increase even though ‘taxes’ remain the same or even decrease, received relatively little attention from politicians. After the late 1980s this neglect suddenly ended.
