Tax

Tax

A tax is a compulsory 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.

Taxes may be paid in cash or in kind or as corvee labor. In modern capitalist taxation systems, taxes are designed to encourage the most efficient circulation of goods and services and are levied in cash. In kind and corvee taxation are characteristic of traditional or pre-capitalist states and their functional equivalents. 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.

Public finance is the field of political science and economics that deals with taxation.

HISTORY OF TAXATION

Political authority has been used to raise capital throughout history. In many pre-monetary societies, such as the Incan empire, taxes were owed in labor. Taxation in labor was the basis of the Feudal system in medieval Europe.

In more sophisticated economies such as the Roman Empire, tax farming developed, as the central powers could not practically enforce their tax policy across a wide realm. The tax farmers were obligated to raise large sums for the government, but were allowed to keep whatever else they raised.

Many Christians have understood the New Testament to support the payment of taxes, through Jesus's words "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's".

There were certain times in the Middle Ages where the governments did not explicitly tax, since they were self-supporting, owning their own land and creating their own products. The appearance of doing without taxes was however illusory, since the government's (usually the Crown's) independent income sources depended on labor enforced under the feudal system, which is a tax exacted in kind.

Many taxes were originally introduced to fund wars and are still in place today, such as those raised by the American government during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Income tax was first introduced into Britain in 1798 to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic wars and into Canada in 1917 as a "temporary" tax under the Income War Tax Act to cover government expenses resulting from World War I.

The current income tax in America was set up by Theodore Roosevelt in 1913. It was called The Federal Income Tax and was deducted from incomes at rates varying from 1-7%. But, since then, the American Tax Code has been modified and new taxes have been added, especially over the World War I and II periods. Since World War II, the American Tax Code has increased in size four-fold.

Types of Taxes

Taxes are sometimes referred to as direct or indirect. The meaning of these terms can vary in different contexts, which can sometimes lead to confusion. In economics, direct taxes refer to those taxes that are collected from the people or organizations on whom they are imposed. For example, income taxes are collected from the person who earns the income. By contrast, indirect taxes are collected from someone other than the person responsible for paying the taxes.

From whom a tax is collected is a matter of law. However, who pays the tax is determined by the market place and is found by comparing the price of the good (including tax) after the tax is imposed to the price of the good before the tax was imposed. For example, suppose the price of gas in the U.S., without taxes, were $2.00 per gallon. Suppose the U.S. government imposes a tax of $0.50 per gallon on the gas. Forces of demand and supply will determine how that $0.50 tax burden is distributed among the buyers and sellers. For example, it is possible that the price of gas, after the tax, might be $2.40. In such a case, buyers would be paying $0.40 of the tax while the sellers would be paying $0.10 of the tax.

INCOME TAX

Income tax is commonly a progressive tax because the tax rate increases with increasing income. For this reason, it is generally advocated by those who think that taxation should be borne more by the rich than by the poor, even to the point of serving as a form of social redistribution. Some critics characterize this tax as a form of punishment for economic productivity. Other critics charge that income taxation is inherently socially intrusive because enforcement requires the government to collect large amounts of information about business and personal affairs, much of which is considered proprietary and confidential.

Income tax fraud is a problem in most, if not all, countries implementing an income tax. Either one fails to declare income, or declares nonexistent expenses. Failure to declare income is especially easy for non-salaried work, especially those paid in cash. Tax enforcement authorities fight tax fraud using various methods, nowadays with the help of computer databases. They may, for instance, look for discrepancies between declared revenue and expenses along time. Tax enforcement authorities then target individuals for a tax audit – a more or less detailed review of the income and tax-deductible expenses of the individual.

Income tax may be collected from legal entities (e.g., companies) as well as natural persons (individuals), although, in some cases, the income tax on legal entities is levied on a slightly different basis than the income tax on individuals and may be called, in the case of income tax on companies, a corporation tax or a corporate income tax.

POLL TAX

A poll tax, also called a per capita tax, or capitation tax, is a tax that levies a set amount per individual. The earliest tax mentioned in the Bible of a half-shekel per annum from each adult Jew was a form of poll tax. Poll taxes are regressive, since they take the same amount of money (and hence, a higher proportion of income) for poorer individuals as for richer individuals. Poll taxes are difficult to cheat.

VALUE ADDED TAX

A value added tax (sometimes called a goods and services tax, as in Australia and Canada) applies the equivalent of a sales tax to every operation that creates value. To give an example, sheet steel is imported by a machine manufacturer. That manufacturer will pay the VAT on the purchase price, that amount to the government. The manufacturer will then transform the steel into a machine, selling the machine for a higher price to a wholesale distributor. The manufacturer will collect the VAT on the higher price, but will remit to the government only the excess related to the "value added" (the price over the cost of the sheet steel). The wholesale distributor will then continue the process, charging the retail distributor the VAT on the entire price to the retailer, but remitting only the amount related to the distribution markup to the government. The last VAT amount is paid by the eventual retail customer who cannot recover any of the previously paid VAT. Economic theorists have argued that this minimizes the market distortion resulting from the tax, compared to a sales tax.

VAT was historically used when a sales tax or excise tax was uncollectible. For example, a 30% sales tax is so often cheated that most of the retail economy will go off the books. By collecting the tax at each production level, and requiring the previous production level to collect the next level tax in order to recover the VAT previously paid by that production level, the theory is that the entire economy helps in the enforcement. In reality, forged invoices and the like demonstrate that tax evaders will always attempt to cheat the system.

Origins of Money

There are numerous myths about the origins of money. The concept of money is often confused with coinage. Coins are a relatively modern form of money. Their first appearance was probably in Asia in the 7th century BC. And whether these coins were used as money in the modern sense has also been questioned.

To determine the earliest use of money, we need to define what we mean by money. We will return to this issue shortly. But with any reasonable definition the first use of money is as old as human civilization. The early Persians deposited their grain in state or church granaries. The receipts of deposit were then used as methods of payment in the economies. Thus, banks were invented before coins. Ancient Egypt had a similar system, but instead of receipts they used orders of withdrawal – thus making their system very close to that of modern checks. In fact, during Alexander the Great’s period, the granaries were linked together, making checks in the 3rd century BC more convenient than British checks in the 1980s.

However, money is older than written history. Recent anthropological and linguistic research indicates that not only is money very old, but it’s origin has little to do with trading, thus contradicting another common myth. Rather, money was first used in a social setting. Probably at first as a method of punishment.

Early Stone Age man began the use of precious metals as money. Until the invention of coins, metals were weighed to determine their value. Counting is of course more practical, the first standardized ingots appeared around 2200 BC. Other commonplace objects were subsequently used in the abstract sense, for example miniature axes, nails, swords, etc.

Full standardization arrived with coins, approximately 700 BC. The first printed money appeared in China, around 800 AD. The first severe inflation was in the 11th century AD. The Mongols adapted the bank note system in the 13th century, which Marco Polo wrote about. The Mongol bank notes were “legal tender”, i.e. it was a capital offense to refuse them as payment. By the late 1400s, centuries of inflation eliminated printed bank notes in China. They were reinvented in Europe in the 17th century.