Tax
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a contribution imposed by authority on people to meet the expenses of government or other public services. (1) A government imposition, or charge made by the State on the income or property of individuals, or on products consumed by them. A tax is said to be direct when it is demanded from the very persons who it is intended or desired should pay it, as a poll tax, income tax, property tax, taxes for keeping dogs, etc. An indirect tax is one demanded from one person, who is expected and intended to recoup or indemnify himself at the expense of another, as customs and excise duties. (2) Any rate or sum imposed on individuals for municipal, county, or other local purposes, as police taxes, taxes for the repairs of roads, bridges, etc., poor tax, drainage tax, etc. Tax applies to or implies whatever is paid by the people to the government, according to a certain estimate; the cus toms are a species of tax which are less specific than other taxes being regulated by custom rather than any definite law; the customs apply particularly to what was customarily given by merchants for the goods which they imported from abroad. The predominant idea in contribution is that of common consent; it supposes a degree of freedom in the agent which is incompatible with the exercise of authority expressed by the other terms, hence the term is with more propriety applied to those cases in which men voluntarily unite in giving toward any particular object; as charitable contributions, or contributions in support of a war; but it may be taken in the general sense of a forced payment, as in speaking of military contribution. Also a disagreeable or burdensome duty or charge; an oppressive demand or exaction; a requisition; as, this is a heavy tax on his time and strength. See SINGLE TAX; INCOME TAX.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 could still define a tax largely through poll taxes, dog licences, road and poor rates, with customs and excise as the great indirect levies "regulated by custom." That balance has inverted: the income tax the entry cross-references, made constitutional in the United States by the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 and collected by payroll withholding from 1943, became the fiscal backbone of most rich states, while the value-added tax — unknown in 1921, first levied in France in 1954 — now operates in roughly 170 countries. Total government revenue has grown from a small share of national income in 1921 to something like a third or more of GDP across the developed world, and in 2021 more than 130 countries agreed through the OECD to a 15 per cent minimum tax on large multinationals. The definitions themselves, direct versus indirect, still appear in textbooks almost as Collier's phrased them.
Written for this edition, 2026.