Modeling general taxation requirements when public goods, citizens’ rights to goods and services, and poverty are considered

This article presents a basic model for evaluating minimum general taxation requirements. General taxes are defined as revenues of the non-beneficiary type. Although the model can be expanded to account for other rationales, this model assumes that general taxes are levied to address market failure. Market failure can be classified as failure of efficiency in allocation or distribution. In the text, a model is built that can simultaneously deal with both problems. The result is a model that will yield the minimum level of required general taxes. The model can be employed by public financial managers to better evaluate general tax revenue needs, to better understand sources of market failure, and how to rectify market failure problems.