increases by less than 50 percent and may even decline.The government's tax revenue is the size of the tax times the amount of the good sold. Graphically, tax revenue equals the area of the rectangle formed by the tax wedge between the supply and demand curves. Recall that the area of a rectangle is width times length; in this case the width is the amount of the tax and the length is the quantity sold. When a tax increases from 10 cents to 15 cents per pound, this means the width of the rectangle increases by 50 percent. However, because demand is downward sloping and supply is upward sloping, the length of this rectangle also decreases. Therefore, the overall area of the rectangle increases by less than 50 percent and may even decline if the decrease in length more than offsets the increase in width. See Section: Deadweight Loss and Tax Revenue as Taxes Vary.