> Okay, let's explore this idea.
You are missing an entire family of methods that would work quite well and not lead to the kinds of problems periodic billing would engender.
Sales tax, VAT, etc. is one form of this.
And then, of course, there's income tax.
We have somehow lost control of the simple idea of the "village" getting together to pay for stuff by exploding into a system of thousands of different taxes nobody can keep track of. The end result is massive waste of resources, bad management, substandard results and large government organizations that are mostly incompetent at nearly everything they do.
My street has been repaved twice in 25 years. They tell me they are planning on repaving it yet again next year. This street is 25 years old. It was as close to perfect as one could get when I moved in, months after the built it. It was just as perfect just before they repaved it (twice). It is perfect now. And yet, they are going to do it again.
The financial waste on this one street alone is nothing less than vomit-inducing. They are doing this to keep unionized government-agency workers employed. Oh, yes, they tore-up and rebuilt our perfect sidewalks a few months ago. Absolutely and utterly unnecessary.
While I do recognize the idea of sending people a bill for taxes isn't great, sometimes I wish we had that, maybe for a year or so.
Why?
People have no clue whatsoever about how much of their money is being consumed by hundreds, if not thousands, of taxes they encounter on a daily basis. It would be fantastic to see one lump-sum bill show-up every month. I guarantee you voting decision would change radically after just a few months of that. What they are doing to the population through this explosions in taxes should be criminal.