A tax (also known as a "duty") is a financial charge or other levy imposed on an individual or a legal entity by a state or a functional equivalent of a state (e.g. tribes, secessionist movements or revolutionary movements). Taxes could also be imposed by a subnational entity.
In English Slang - originating from the North of England - tax is a word that is sometimes used in reference to theft. In particular robbery mugging/street theft.
Taxes consist of direct tax or indirect tax, and may be paid in money or as corvée labor. In modern, capitalist taxation systems, taxes are levied in money, but in-kind and corvée taxation are characteristic of traditional or pre-capitalist states and their functional equivalents.
In English language nations, a government agency, such as Revenue Canada or the Internal Revenue Service in the United States or in the United Kingdom the Inland Revenue or commonly amalgamated as Her Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK, collects taxes. When taxes are not paid to a government's satisfaction, civil penalties such as fines or forfeiture are carried out against the non-paying entity or individual. In most modern industrialized countries, when an individual fails to pay his government the taxes, it will ultimately result in fines, and in some cases imprisonment.
The means of taxation, and the uses to which the funds raised through taxation should be put, are a matter of hot dispute in politics and economics, so discussions of taxation are frequently tendentious.
