I contend that is unfair to levy a societal benefit solely on customers of taxis during the hours at which taxis would be available anyway without government mandates.

I would even go so far as to say if the government is mandating something, then the costs should be distributed amongst that government’s tax base (can be progressively distributed, but across the whole tax base nonetheless).

There are many cases in which we might want the government to mandate something and direct the cost towards a particular group. For example, when a societal cost is caused by the choices of a particular group. Distributing this cost equally or progressively may be a less fair way to do it. And in some cases, distributing this cost to society as a whole may remove an important financial disincentive for bad behavior.

e.g.:

* making polluters responsible for cleanup costs

* making investors responsible for the costs of overseeing the markets they profit from

* making bad drivers responsible for paying for the consequences of their actions

I'd say it's more fair to say that we could distribute costs to society when it's a public service that generally benefits everyone, or the disadvantaged. But I don't think we would want to distribute societal costs incurred by the rich or reckless.

Your first and third examples are punishments for violating the law (or harming society), not societal benefits. Hence not applicable to what we are talking about here, in my opinion.

The second example I see no problem distributing amongst society, if functioning markets are providing a benefit to society.

There are corruption risks with making government functions dependent upon the thing they are policing.