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.