I like your post as an interesting though project. My initial reaction was "yeah, why not a tax break for not having a car", but I'm not sure why you would get

I like your post as an interesting though project. My initial reaction was "yeah, why not a tax break for not having a car", but I'm not sure why you would get a tax break for not eating meat. Are you thinking a carbon credit type of thing. On deeper inspection, it actually probably doesn't make much sense to give you a tax break on these sorts of things. Your tax dollars are helping the entire system run. You still use streets, so why would you get a tax break for not having a car? Also, tax is not an a la carte purchase. In some ways I wish it was, but it isn't. I've always been interested in the idea of paying my taxes, but getting to say where it goes. So on my tax return, I can allocate what percentage of my taxes go to different parts of gov't. How many people would spend more on public health and less on military. More on roads and less on farm subsidies, etc etc? There are a few problems with this approach. 1) Many people may not understand the long-term effects of what their taxes go to, and that could cause major issues, but I like it as a concept. Vote with your Tax Dollars. 2) It couldn't be a direct percent of your tax dollars, otherwise those paying more tax would have more say, so it would have to be averaged across all tax payers.