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Tax

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

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Definition

A tax (from the Latin taxo) is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed upon a taxpayer (an individual or other legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund various public expenditures (McLure 1970). A failure to pay, along with evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labor equivalent.

Legal Definition

The legal definition and the economic definition of taxes differ in some ways such as economists do not regard many transfers to governments as taxes. For example, some transfers to the public sector are comparable to prices. Examples include tuition at public universities and fees for utilities provided by local governments. Governments also obtain resources by “creating” money and coins (e.g., by printing bills and by minting coins), through voluntary gifts (e.g., contributions to public universities and museums), by imposing penalties...

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References

  • Aaron, H. (1976). Inflation and the income tax. The American Economic Review, 66(2), 193–199. Papers and proceedings of the eighty-eighth annual meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1976).

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  • Economic Data and Statistics on World Economy and Economic Freedom. www.heritage.org.

  • McLure, C. E., Jr. (1970). Taxation, substitution, and industrial location. Journal of Political Economy, 78(1), 121–132. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu.

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  • Smith, A. (2015). The wealth of nations: A translation into modern English (pp. 423–429). Manchester: Industrial Systems Research. ISBN 978-0-906321-70-6.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bologne, Department of Management, Bologne, Italy

    Stefania Vignini

Authors
  1. Stefania Vignini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefania Vignini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. No affiliation provided

    Kristijan Krač

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Vignini, S. (2020). Tax. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_888-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_888-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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