barking dog tax

In the spirit of having a methane tax to represent the real cost of cows, or a greenhouse gas tax to represent the real cost of electricity, I propose a barking dog tax to fairly represent the noise pollution caused by dogs.

Here's how it would work:
1) Each dog owner would pay $5 per month directly to each person in earshot of the barking dog.
2) If the person in earshot was also a dog owner, then the taxes would cancel out, because both owners would have to pay them to each other.
3) Any tax recipient who plays with the dog or receives some benefit from the dog within the month would forfeit his or her dog tax for that month.
4) Working dogs (seeing eye dogs, livestock herding dogs, etc.) are exempt from the tax. If a nonworking dog performs an act of good for the community such as alerting people to the presence of a robber, the dog tax is exempted for two months.

This tax would have the following beneficial effects:
1) Dog owners would realize that their dogs create noise pollution
2) Non-dog people would be compensated for the annoyance of barking
3) Owning a dog would become more expensive, and owning a dog in a populated area would be MUCH more expensive.
4) More dog owners would choose more isolated houses, benefiting the dogs as they would have more room to run
5) Dog and non-dog communities would form
6) Poor people would choose to live on the outskirts of dog communities, suffering through the noise but benefiting financially from their service of creating a buffer zone between dog and non-dog people.

Write to your senator today!