In the late 1980s, some counties began to levy availability charges to finance building and maintenance of landfills, and later to finance green box and recycling programs. The rationale for these charges is that they are compensation for making a service available the landfill, for example. In the case of the landfill, the charges bear no relationship to residents actual use of that landfill or the volume of waste they put in it. Although availability charges were first conceived to finance waste disposal, there is no limit to the type of service that could be financed using this concept. Employing the same rationale, we could conceive of other flat taxes to compensate for the availability of police protection, fire protection, public schools, public health services, or any other public service now financed from general revenues.
Some counties impose recycling charges on each household in addition to solid waste charges.
These charges apply to all households in the county. Those who live in towns and cities might pay an additional flat charge for household garbage collection. Traditionally, garbage collection in municipalities has been financed from the general fund, meaning that the revenues have come mainly from property taxes and, since 1971, retail sales taxes. In recent years many units have begun to finance garbage collection by levying a flat tax on each household, without regard to the amount of garbage collected. Motor vehicle taxes .