tax

UK/tæks/US/tæks/

nounB12 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,921 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: taxes, taxed, taxing

Tax is the share of money everybody has to pay to the government. Taken from wages, added to purchases, and never optional.

It funds roads, schools and hospitals, which is the argument for it, and it is the subject of more political argument than almost anything else. English names them by what they fall on: income tax, council tax, road tax, value added tax. The verb has a lovely second sense, since something that taxes your patience is wearing it out, and a taxing problem is a demanding one.

Definitions of tax

1nountaxMoney that must be paid to the government.B1~98%
“He pays tax on everything he earns.”
2verbheavyTo make heavy demands on something.C1~2%
“The journey taxed her strength.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 6 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: taxes

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*teh₂g-
Medieval Latin
taxa
Middle French
taxe
Middle English
taxe
English, today
tax

From Middle English taxe, from Middle French taxe, from Medieval Latin taxa, from Latin taxō (“to appraise, value, estimate; (medieval) to tax”). a doublet of task. Displaced native gafol, which was also the word for “tribute” and “rent”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Shopping & Money, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

tax in the wild

The United States has separate federal, state, and local governments with taxes imposed at each of these levels.
Taxation in the United States
In 2020, taxes collected by federal, state, and local governments amounted to 25.5% of GDP, below the OECD average of 33.5% of GDP.
Taxation in the United States
Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income.
Income tax
The tax rate may increase as taxable income increases (referred to as graduated or progressive tax rates).
Income tax
Usually, laws allow the seller to collect funds for the tax from the consumer at the point of purchase.
Sales tax

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the taxa family

taxi tax

tax — used about once every 231 pages · #1,921 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of tax

1nountaxMoney that must be paid to the government.B1~98%

“He pays tax on everything he earns.”

2verbheavyTo make heavy demands on something.C1~2%

“The journey taxed her strength.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 6 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: taxes