Lightweight tags are simply references to commits that lie in refs/tags instead of refs/heads. Annotated tags are references to tag objects rather than commit o

Lightweight tags are simply references to commits that lie in refs/tags instead of refs/heads. Annotated tags are references to tag objects rather than commit objects. In both cases, the purpose of the reference is to give the object (tag or commit) a name. I think no one uses lightweight tags anymore, except if you push by mistake a commit to refs/tags/something.