pay and the price sellers get, the quantity sold is reduced below the level that it would be without tax. To put it another way, a tax on good causes the size of market for that good to decrease. For example, suppose that Will is a cleaner who is working in the cleaning service company and Amie hired Will to clean her room every week for $100. The opportunity cost of Will's time is $80, while the value of a clean house to Amie is $120. Hence, each of them get same amount of benefit from their deal. Amie and Will each receive a benefit of $20, making the total surplus from trade $40. However, if the government were to decide to impose a $50 tax upon the providers of cleaning services, their trade would no longer benefit them. Amie would not be willing to pay any price above $120, and Will would no longer receive a payment that exceeds his opportunity cost. As a result, not only do Amie and Will both give up the deal, but Amie has to live in a dirtier house, and Will does not receive his desired income. They have thus lost amount of the surplus that they would have received from their deal, and at the same time, this made each of them worse off to the tune of $40 in value. Government revenue is also affected by this tax: since Amie and Will have abandoned the deal, the government also loses any tax revenue that would have resulted from wages. This $40 is referred to as the deadweight loss. It causes losses for both buyers and sellers in a market, as well as decreasing government revenues. Taxes cause deadweight losses because they prevent buyers and sellers from realizing some of the gains from trade. In the graph, the deadweight loss can be seen as the shaded area between the supply and demand curves. While the demand curve shows the value of goods to the consumers, the supply curve reflects the cost for producers. As the example above explains, when the government imposes a tax upon taxpayers, the tax increases the price paid by buyers to and decreases price received by sellers to . Buyers and sellers (Amie and Will) give up the deal between them and exit the market. Thus, the quantity sold reduces from to . The deadweight loss occurs because