Originally published in 1991, user charges and earmarked taxes are methods by which people pay directly for the services they recieve from government. As such they are frequently supported by those who oppose increased taxation, who argue that they are more like market transactions than traditional forms of taxation. This book explores the cogency of these arguments in the light of public choice analyses of political processes.

1. Tax norms, fiscal reality, and the democratic state: user charges and earmarked taxes in principle and practice 2. The fiscal significance of user charges and earmarked taxes: a survey 3. User charges, rent seeking, and public choice 4. The political economy of user charges: some bureaucratic implication 5. Subjective cost, property rights, and public pricing 6. The practice and politics of marginal cost pricing: the case of the French electric monopoly 7. The political economy of tax earmarking 8. Rent seeking and tax earmarking 9. Tax earmarking and the optimal lobbying strategy 10. The constitutional economics of earmarking 11. Excises, earmarked taxes, and government user charges in a rent seeking model 12. User fees and earmarked taxes in constitutional perspective