Voluntary tax

The Washington Times has a report on the success(?) of a voluntary taxation scheme in the US state of Virginia, and no its not a great success. The Washington Post writes,

State lawmakers can rule out Virginian's offering up more of their hard-earned money to fix the $1.4 billion budget shortfall Gov. Tim Kaine announced this week.

At least that is what a peek at the so-called "Tax Me More Fund" suggests.

Since its inception in 2002, the fund has collected a total of $10,217.04.

This is 0.00000005 percent of Virginia's budget since 2002. The best year so far was 2003 when the program collected $6,602. The low point was in 2006, when the state received $19.36.

I'm sure there is a message in this somewhere.

(HT: Megan McArdle via Arnold Kling)