Last week, I drove a friend to get a copy of his birth certificate for his passport application. He had to pay about $20 for it. On the drive back, he wonder why it cost him anything. His taxes already paid for the person to already work there and processing birth certificates and other documents are part of his job. He also mentioned how his wife had to pay have her fingerprints processed for a criminal background check. “It’s that person’s job already to check fingerprints. Why should she have to pay more than our taxes that pay his salary already?” To him, it was equivalent to the police charging a fee to a store owner for arresting a shoplifter or robber. So, what is the justification for additional government fees?
The justification is that the government in their infinite wisdom has decided that certain services should be paid for by their consumers rather than the public at large. This is not a particularly new concept. Bureaucratic fees, bridge tolls, postage stamps, transit fares, excise taxes, and so forth have been with us pretty much since the dawn of government.
ETA: Many of these things are not completely self-funded by user fees, and receive some subsidy in the form of taxes. One thing the fees do is lower the needed subsidy borne by the public for services that only a small number of people need. Another thing they do is dissuade people from abusing the service, like some jackass who gets his kick by demanding a new copy of his birth certificate every day.
A short answer is that taxes have been cut, and the government is trying to find other sources of funding. Do you want it both ways?
As an ex-pat living a quiet life, the main service the U.S. government provides me is to notarize a document once or twice a year. They charge a $50 fee for this. In U.S., notarization was often available for free; when not, a typical fee was $10 IIRC.
I was at the U.S. Consulate one day when a woman complained about the $50 fee for notarizing an 8-page document. The consular official found the woman rude so charged her $50 per page. :smack:
I don’t think the origins of governments charging for specific services has anything to do with “taxes being cut.” Like friedo says, government has been trying to balance for ages the proper relationship between general taxation, excise taxes, and user fees. Sometimes excise taxes and user fees are reserved for special purposes, as opposed to being for general revenue.
There are tons and tons of examples to use, from TSA to the Patent Office to arguably the Postal Service. It isn’t accurate to think of these organizations as being adequately supported by taxes so that user fees are some kind of bonus slush fund. If the user fees didn’t exist, there would be a severe budget shortfall for these agencies: the workers would not get paid, the agencies couldn’t execute their mission, etc.
What’s more, user fees can also serve like a copay for a health insurance policy. If you didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket each time such a service was used, more people would probably use the system for unimportant things. Like the notarization of the documents: if it was free, the Consulate would probably do nothing but notarize not only important things like wills and powers of attorney, but maybe things like purchase orders, angry letters to corporations, or nice photos of one’s children.
Having worked for government, I agree with the above but I can also share an additional point.
Like every other type of enterprise, government has an operational budget and a capital budget. The capital budget is for things. Often they are very big things, like new buildings, bridge construction, and roadwork. But small things also go onto the capital budget. Computers. Xerox machines. Office furniture.
Capital budgets are typically equal in size to the operating budget, but aren’t always reported in the same way. So when news reports talk about the size of government they sometimes just talk about the operational budget, and whether jobs are lost. The public wants the budget to go down and seems happiest when that is done by cutting government jobs rather than by cutting services, as counterproductive as that might be.
If the public is willing to see jobs lost, what do you think their stance is on xerox machines? The capital budget is a continual battleground. Up here in the rust belt, everything is aging and needs repair, refurbishing, or replacement. Capital needs always run 200% or more of the budget. Departments battle furiously against one another to get their priorities included. (Not that this is much different from private sector companies, but they don’t have to ask you for that money.)
User fees are a way of getting around the capital budget and having more of those small useful things in the office. It’s not quite as direct as that, of course: money from copies of a birth certificate aren’t put in a jar marked “new copier.” But while people complain about user fees, those are at least justified by being paid only by those who get the direct benefit. Those complaints are normally far less in total than the overall screams about higher taxes even if they would go for the identical list of items.
Can governments go too far with use fees? Of course. Sometimes they are rolled back. I just read about the true cost of a traffic ticket in California and my jaw dropped. These are the add-on user fees for an $85 traffic ticket.
CHARGE OFFENSE COST
State surcharge PC1465.7 $20.00
Mandatory fees & administrative assessments $85.00
» Conviction assessment — infraction GC70373 $35.00
» Court operations fee PC1465.8 $40.00
» Prior administrative fee VC40508.6 $10.00
Additional penalties PC14 $394.00
» 2 percent automation fund GC68090.8 $7.88
» Emergency medical air transport fe GC7600.10(c) 2.74
» County MOE PC1464 $20.58
» DNA additional — state GC76104.7 $39.20
» DNA database — county probationGC76104.6 $2.94
» DNA database — county sheriff GC76104.6 $4.41
» DNA database — state GC76104.6 $2.45
» Emergency medical services GC76000.5 $19.60
» Emergency medical services — county GC76104 $13.72
» Fingerprint fund — county GC76102 $3.43
» State courthouse construction GC70372 $13.72
» State courthouse construction fund GC70372(a) $20.58
» Local courthouse construction fund GC76100 $13.72
» Local justice facilities fund GC76101 $17.15
» Penalty assessment PC1464 $48.02
» San Luis Obispo base — county PC1463.001 $3.61
» San Luis Obispo base MOE PC1463.001 $10.80
» San Luis Obispo base PC1463.002 $54.20
» San Luis Obispo — red light PC1463.11 $95.25
Total $499.00
Remember, In California you’re not just a scofflaw: you’re a capital contributor.
The job exists because of demand for these services. If the clerk was standing around doing nothing when no services were required, the job would be eliminated.
So the service-user is sharing the cost of employing the clerk, who would be unemployed without demand for the services.
One big reason for this is that it is easier to raise money with user fees than with taxes, which often need a super-majority. And there is relatively little sympathy for those struck paying traffic ticket fees. There has been some effort to let people know that the cost of the ticket proper isn’t anything near what you will pay.
A lot of schools have added fees also.
And not just government does it. Go to a resort and get hit with spa fees even if you go nowhere near the spa.
Anyone old enough to remember the CB radio craze in the late 70’s - early 80’s?
The FCC (?) would charge for a license; when they realized hundreds of thousands (millions) wanted these licenses they jacked up the fees significantly, for a big windfall. IIRC a class action suit got much of that money back, the courts said “your mandate was to cover the cost of issuing the licenses, you had no right to make a windfall profit.” Based on the wording of the act, which IIRC meant it could not be a profit/tax.
Not only do I not remember any such suit, I remember that the FCC dropped the price of the license from $20 to $4 when they add 17 new channels in 1977 at the height of the craze.
Do you have a cite for any of this?
I think they’re talking about the 1974 Supreme Court decisions in National Cable Television Association v United States and FPC v. New England Power Co, and then some 1976 decisions by the Court of Appeals in NCTA v FCC, NAB v FCC, EIA v FCC and Capital Cities v FCC, which basically said that, when an independent agency collects fees for a service, the fees have to have a direct relationship to the value of the service to the entity being charged the fee and the cost of providing the service, and can’t be determined based on general public policy interests.
In other words, an agency can’t say, “Well, we need to raise $1 million in revenue, and we have 100,000 people who want to apply for X, therefore the fee for X is $10.”
How is this at all relevant? I’m sure there is a general principle and law on the subject. Even so, I reiterate that every single actual claim made in md2000’s post appears to be nonsense. None of the cases you mention appear to be class action suits, none are about CB radios, and none are about the FCC raising a fee that they actually lowered. Those are the only relevant points.
If there is actual relevant information to substantiate the claims I would still like to see it.
Makes me think of getting extra pages in my passport. Used to be you could waltz into any US Embassy, say, “Extra pages, please,” and walk out with your now-fatter passport in a matter of minutes at no charge. Now there’s a fee for extra pages, and the fee isn’t too far off from just paying for a new passport.
I think the OP’s question sounds more like: Why should I have to pay for anything. I pay your salaries, you are here to serve me. Leona Helmsley reincarnated.
Maybe, but that’s the closest thing I can find to a court decision forcing the FCC to revise its fee structure so that it reflected the cost of issuing the licenses and not providing a windfall, which seems to be the general point of the fact he was trying to remember, even though his actual facts were wrong, in that it wasn’t class action and wasn’t CB, etc.
Presumably, you drove on public roads – a gift to you & him from all the non-car-owing citizens who paid taxes for those roads. Would you rather have the roads paid for only by people who drive on them? Then be prepared for your gas taxes to triple or so. (Here in Minnesota, gas taxes cover only 1/3 of the cost – the rest comes from the general fund.)
It goes back to what Friedo mentioned – paying for government services either by directly charging those using a specific service, or treating it as a common good and paying for it from government funds and everyone can use it for free, or some combination of those.
For example, we have decided that a transportation system in our country (roads, railroads, airports, navigable rivers, etc.) is a public good, and it is mostly paid for out of general government funds, and available for everyone to use. [Historically, most governments have decided the same, going back as far as the Roman empire building their roads (interconnected, so that ‘all roads lead to Rome’).]
Part of it is probably that if they didn’t charge you for, say, getting a copy of your birth certificate, you’d have no incentive not to lose it. Get a copy, show it to the person that needs to see it and toss it away. When you need a new one, go get one. If they charge you a few dollars, you have an incentive to file it away where you can find it. OTOH, part of it is also a revenue stream.
A few years back my city started charging our business a ‘sewer tax’. We called them up to let them know that we don’t have any sewers on our property and they basically said, in not so many words, ‘if it wasn’t this, it would be something else’.
If you want to talk about useless taxes, however, I have to pay a yearly fee of $5 to get a "Sodawater license’. Just like I have to have a license to sell food (makes sense, because of the inspections) or booze, I also have to pay a fee to sell soda. We also had to pay a one time fee of $5 to get a license to have a burglar alarm. I can’t think of any reason why we needed a license to sell soda. There’s no inspections needed for it, there’s no special handling required for it, but each year I have to pay it.
Something else to think about. Think about all the people that need copies of vital records. It costs money for that labor, the paper, wear and tear on the machines. Either they can charge the people who actually need the copies or they can charge everyone else in the form of higher (property) taxes. If you never lose your birth certificate or need a background check, do you really want to pay for the people that need copies of theirs?
One that does bother me, though, is that in my city I have to pay for sidewalk that gets replaced in front of my house. I understand it’s about $100 per section. Now, I wouldn’t have a problem if they charged me for cracked sections in front of my driveway. My Honda isn’t going to break them as often as my neighbor’s Dodge Ram 2500, so that would make sense. But no one is cracking concrete just by walking on it. I could also understand if if they could show that it was due to trees planted on my property (on my side of the sidewalk). But with a few exceptions, if it’s in front of your house, you foot the bill. There’s a house a few blocks away from me, on an outside corner with a crack through every block. I counted 22 blocks. That’s going to be an expensive bill. It’s something that I always figure I should keep in mind when buying a house. Ask for a discount if you know the city is going to be doing sidewalk repairs soon (or rather, ask for cash). If I was moving into that house, I’d be asking for $2500 check from the current homeowners as part of the deal.
And , FTR, I do believe in taxes. I’m always surprised when people talk about how stupid taxes are but answer ‘yes’ when I say “do you like driving on streets and having someone answer the phone when you dial 911?”. Can’t have it both ways.
How much of it is covered by License Plate fees? I don’t know about MN, but in WI we have to renew those each years and the heavier the vehicle the more expensive the plate.
Also, it’s slightly different since, as you mentioned, people that don’t drive also enjoy use of the public roads.
If someone went and got a new copy of their birth certificate each time they got a new job it wouldn’t do me any good, it would just cost me money.
Seems weird. At $5 a pop, it must cost more to collect than it yields - or close to.
This one is more easily explained. Presumably the thinking is that having a paved sidewalk providing access to your property enhances the value of your property, so you should contribute to the cost of paving more than other members of the community.
Government officials get to arbitrarily make up their own pricing on the fly?
State chief justice says unpaid traffic fines should get day in court
Gov. Brown Proposes Amnesty On Traffic Debt For The Poor
Another sign that Gov. Brown isn’t a fan of traffic fees:
Brown veto message: $35 school traffic fine was actually lots higher