Why do laws that give penal fines or fees not specify that the amount be adjusted for inflation?
<p>For example, the United States National Firearms Act of 1934 specified that anyone wanting to buy a machine gun had to pay a $200 fee for a tax stamp. According to <a href="http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this inflation calculator</a>, that was equivalent to $3274.69 today.  Thus the fee has gone from a significant deterrent to legal machine gun ownership to a minor inconvenience.</p>

<p>Rather than periodically updating fees and fines for inflation, as legislatures often do, why not specify that the fine be an amount with equivalent buying power to <em>x</em> amount on the date the legislation takes effect?</p>

<p>Australian jurisdictions have overcome this by setting fines in ”<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_unit" rel="nofollow noreferrer">penalty units</a>” - they then periodically revise how much a penalty unit is.</p>

<p>The main reason is that there are very many computations of inflation rate. A legislature would have to decide on a specific method of computing inflation (for each fine), and would have to re-pass various laws to automatically adjust fees for inflation. It's politically simpler to pass an amendment to change a number, than to agree on a sketchy concept such as "rate of inflation".</p>

fees