"fair": I meant it as no one is cheating the system (rather than the system itself is fair). IE if there's a tax for smokers only, it's ok that non smokers don't have to pay it. On the other hand, if some smokers don't pay that tax because they found a way around it, then that's unfair to the other smokers who are paying. For your proposal to be fair, they'd need to be a way to bill for all goods and services, which may be technically hard to do (how do you implement sidewalks tolls in a way that it can't be bypassed by walking on people's grass?) . "progressive". The more money people have the less they spend on goods and services and the more they invest. Basically if you make 1M and spend 100K on goods and services, you'd only be taxes on 10% of your income vs someone making 50K who's going to be taxes on 100% of income. This problem is amplified with compound interest on investments (rich getting richer faster). My proposal tries to resolve this with an investment tax, but it might be better to keep the capital gain tax instead. . "Simple": For public goods (sidewalks, military, etc) i don't think it'll be easy to track who owes what.