In government, the revenue is fixed (most of the time); you don't have to anything extra to get money from your "investors", i.e citizens. Similarly, from a citizens' perspective, whether the government reduces the cost of doing business will not have a direct effect on the taxes they will be paying (more of less). Plus, they probably wouldn't even know how cost-effective the government is and wouldn't change who they vote for.

So, overall, the government doesn't have any real incentive to operate in a cost-effective manner.

But, let's consider this. The government & parliment (as usual) outline what they what they will fund in the next year, and outlines the overall cost. Then, the percentage of taxes (income, wealth, capital gain) are determined [with a fixed proportion; cost = (%a of income tax) + (%b of wealth tax) + ..., where a,b,.. are fixed] according to that cost.

This way, for a citizen, how cost-effective the government would have a direct consequence on their own personal economy, so they would vote for government who could/do work cost-effectively. They would vote for representatives who pushes for cost-effective reforms.

**Question:**

Have there been such governments in the history? What would be the downsides of such a scheme?