tax
/tæks/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.14 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Money or goods collected by a government (or an entity to whom the government has delegated this power, e.g. in tax farming) to fund itself and its services, for example by levying a charge on income, purchases (sales), property or harvest, other than that money which is collected by the government in exchange for specific goods (e.g. the purchase of surplus vehicles).
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "[They paid a] "mushroom tax" in addition to their regular tax of butter and meat. They had to give 1 dre of dried mushrooms annually to the district administrative centres."
- "The [General Farm] organization collected a tax on salt (gabelle) and another on alcohol and tobacco (aide), along with customs duties (traites) and duties on goods entering Paris from elsewhere in France (entrées). Evasion of all of these taxes through smugglign and other fraud was epidemic[…]"
- "In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […] Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay less tax. The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised."
- "Flie far from hence All private taxes, immodest phrases, What e'r may but shew like vicious."
- "Scrambled egg with cheese [...] careful with the cheese here because it is the main reason for Roxie's runs... [but] We pay a lot of cheese tax in the house [i.e., when we eat cheese, the dog demands to also be given some]."
- "a heavy tax on time or health"
Etymology
From Middle English taxe, from Middle French taxe, from Medieval Latin taxa, from Latin taxō (“to appraise, value, estimate; (medieval) to tax”). Doublet of task. Displaced native Old English gafol, which was also the word for “tribute” and “rent”.