№52058.
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.
3. Ответьте на вопросы, используя текст:
1.What is the definition of a tax?
2.How can taxes be paid?
3. How were taxes paid in medieval Europe?
4.Why were many taxes originally introduced?
5.What kind of document describes what taxes people have to pay?
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