Tax

Some levy a flat percentage rate of taxation on personal annual income, but most scale taxes based on annual income amounts.

A flat tax is a tax system with a constant marginal rate, usually applied to individual or corporate income.

Most countries charge a tax on an individual's income as well as on corporate income.

An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) that varies with respective income or profits (taxable income).

Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent.

Though the actual definitions vary between jurisdictions, in general, a direct tax is a tax imposed upon a person or property as distinct from a tax imposed upon a transaction, which is described as an indirect tax.

Countries or subunits often also impose wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes or tariffs.

The estate tax in the United States is a tax on the transfer of the estate of a deceased person.

In modern taxation systems, governments levy taxes in money; but in-kind and corvée taxation are characteristic of traditional or pre-capitalist states and their functional equivalents.

As such it represents a form of levy (taxation).

These services can include education systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation.

Occupational pensions are a form of deferred compensation, usually advantageous to employee and employer for tax reasons.

The initial equilibrium is in the point (C), in which budget constraint and indifference curve are tangent, introducing an ad valorem tax on the y good (budget constraint: p x x + p y (1 + τ)y = Y), the budget constraint's slope becomes equal to -p y (1 + τ)/p x .

An ad valorem tax (Latin for "according to value") is a tax whose amount is based on the value of a transaction or of property.

The Laffer curve depicts the amount of government revenue as a function of the rate of taxation.

In economics, the Laffer curve illustrates a theoretical relationship between rates of taxation and the resulting levels of government revenue.

A government's ability to raise taxes is called its fiscal capacity.

In economics and political science, fiscal capacity may be referred to as tax capacity, extractive capacity or the power to tax, as taxes are a main source of public revenues.

Another example can be the Introduction of an income lump-sum tax (xp x + yp y = Y - T), with a parallel shift downward of the budget constraint, can be produced a higher revenue with the same loss of consumers' utility compared with the property tax case, from another point of view, the same revenue can be produced with a lower utility sacrifice.

A lump-sum tax is a special way of taxation, based on a fixed amount, rather than on the real circumstance of the taxed entity.

According to the proponents of the chartalist theory of money creation, taxes are not needed for government revenue, as long as the government in question is able to issue fiat money.

In macroeconomics, chartalism is a theory of money that argues that money originated with states' attempts to direct economic activity rather than as a spontaneous solution to the problems with barter or as a means with which to tokenize debt, and that fiat currency has value in exchange because of sovereign power to levy taxes on economic activity payable in the currency they issue.

Since governments also resolve commercial disputes, especially in countries with common law, similar arguments are sometimes used to justify a sales tax or value added tax.

A value-added tax (VAT), known in some countries as a goods and services tax (GST), is a type of tax that is assessed incrementally.

In addition, taxes are applied to fund foreign aid and military ventures, to influence the macroeconomic performance of the economy (a government's strategy for doing this is called its fiscal policy; see also tax exemption), or to modify patterns of consumption or employment within an economy, by making some classes of transaction more or less attractive.

In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure (spending) to influence a country's economy.

Some (libertarians, for example) portray most or all forms of taxes as immoral due to their involuntary (and therefore eventually coercive or violent) nature.

The position that taxation is theft, and therefore immoral, is a viewpoint found in a number of radical political philosophies.

Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent.

An indirect tax (such as sales tax, per unit tax, value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST ), excise, tariff) is a tax collected by an intermediary (such as a retail store) from the person who bears the ultimate economic burden of the tax (such as the consumer).

The most extreme anti-tax view, anarcho-capitalism, holds that all social services should be voluntarily bought by the people using them.

In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors selected by consumers rather than centrally through "confiscatory" taxation.

The incidence of taxation varies by system, and some systems may be viewed as progressive or regressive.

A regressive tax is a tax imposed in such a manner that the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases.

Some levy a flat percentage rate of taxation on personal annual income, but most scale taxes based on annual income amounts. The incidence of taxation varies by system, and some systems may be viewed as progressive or regressive.

A progressive tax is a tax in which the tax rate increases as the taxable amount increases.

Countries or subunits often also impose wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes or tariffs.

An inheritance tax is a tax paid by a person who inherits money or property of a person who has died, whereas an estate tax is a levy on the estate (money and property) of a person who has died.

Some jurisdictions impose taxes on financial or capital transactions.

A financial transaction tax is a levy on a specific type of financial transaction for a particular purpose.

Computation of income subject to tax may be determined under accounting principles used in the jurisdiction, which may be modified or replaced by tax-law principles in the jurisdiction.

Tax law or revenue law is an area of legal study which deals with the constitutional, common-law, statutory, tax treaty, and regulatory rules that constitute the law applicable to taxation.

When taxes are not fully paid, the state may impose civil penalties (such as fines or forfeiture) or criminal penalties (such as incarceration) on the non-paying entity or individual.

Fines can also be used as a form of tax.

Tax collection is performed by a government agency such as the Ghana Revenue Authority, Canada Revenue Agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the United Kingdom or Federal Tax Service in Russia.

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is the Ghana administration charged with the task of assessing, collecting and accounting for tax revenue in Ghana.

A carbon tax is a tax on the consumption of carbon-based non-renewable fuels, such as petrol, diesel-fuel, jet fuels, and natural gas.

A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon content of fuels (transport and energy sector) and, like carbon emissions trading, is a form of carbon pricing.

Some of these include expenditures on economic infrastructure (roads, public transportation, sanitation, legal systems, public safety, education, health-care systems), military, scientific research, culture and the arts, public works, distribution, data collection and dissemination, public insurance, and the operation of government itself.