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What gives you that impression? I get that they are used that way at times, but the core purpose of taxation is to generate revenue for the government.

• 1718627440 1y ago
  Because that's the definition of the term. The other concept is called duties.
  • bpt3 1y ago
    No, it's not. One example definition of tax: a charge usually of money collected by the government from people or businesses for public use. A duty is a type of tax.
    • 1718627440 1y ago
      > a charge usually of money collected by the government from people or businesses for public use. Yes and what makes it a tax is the intention. If it is to regulate a market to be more free, it's a tax, otherwise it's a duty.
      • bpt3 1y ago
        I'm not going to keep going back and forth about this, but wanted to let you know you are 100% wrong in case you're not a native English speaker or something. Please reference any dictionary since you don't believe me.
        • 1718627440 1y ago
          Ok, that might be the case. But these are the words my dictionary gave me. What do you think are the right words for stuff that e.g. needs to be payed to the government a) to regulate the market or b) to provide an income to the government?
          • bpt3 1y ago
            > Ok, that might be the case. But these are the words my dictionary gave me. Please provide a link to this dictionary. > What do you think are the right words for stuff that e.g. needs to be payed to the government a) to regulate the market People generally don't pay the government to regulate the market directly. If you're talking about payment for permit approvals and things like that, most people would call it a fee. If you're talking about the taxes associated with certain financial transactions or approval to import an item into the country, those are often called duty. > b) to provide an income to the government? Taxes.
            • 1718627440 1y ago
              > Please provide a link to this dictionary. $ apt show dict-freedict-deu-eng Package: dict-freedict-deu-eng Version: 2021.01.05-3 Priority: optional Section: text Source: freedict Maintainer: Sebastian Humenda <shumenda@gmx.de> Installed-Size: 25.3 MB Provides: dictd-dictionary Suggests: dictd | dicod, dict | kdict | gnome-dictionary | goldendict Homepage: https://freedict.org/ Tag: culture::TODO, culture::german, made-of::dictionary, role::app-data, role::program, use::converting Download-Size: 17.7 MB APT-Manual-Installed: yes APT-Sources: http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye/main amd64 Packages Description: German-English dictionary for the dict server/client This is the German-English dictionary from the FreeDict project. It contains 463244 headwords (FreeDict status: stable). It can be either used with the dictd server and a dict client or with GoldenDict. I thought "taxes" is the English equivalent to the German "Steuern". A "Steuer" is definitely a thing to regulate inefficiencies due to external costs. > People generally don't pay the government to regulate the market directly. Huh, that's basic government behaviour. How do you call the mechanism of the government imposing money to pay to the state in order to internalize external costs? Alcohol causes sickness -> tax on Alcohol, cigarettes -> tax on cigarettes, car usage wears roads down -> tax on fuel, car usage causes congestion -> fees for car usage, CO2 causes climate change -> tax on CO2, income causes wealth imbalance -> tax on income, land ownership causes inefficient land usage -> tax on land ownership, high frequency trading causes energy waste -> tax on high frequency trade, foreign products cause local unemployment -> tariffs, ... . The list is endless, because it includes every "tax". At least that's what they told me in basic economics class. But then again I'm maybe mistranslating "Steuern". The German term for b) is called "Abgaben" which I thought would mean "duties".