Tax is money that you have to pay to the government, especially from money you earn or as an additional payment when you buy something.
Duty is a tax that you pay on something you buy, especially goods you have bought in another country. A
tariff is a tax on goods coming into a country or going out of a country.
Excise is a government tax that is charged on certain goods that are sold in the country, for example alcoholic drinks and petrol. In the UK, taxes are collected by the government department
HM Revenue and Customs (
HMRC), informally known as the taxman, and by the
Internal Revenue Service (
IRS) in the US.
Public finance is the management of money collected through taxes by a local or national government.
Fiscal describes things connected with government taxes, debts, and spending
fiscal deficit
. A
taxpayer is a person or organization that pays taxes. The
tax rate is the part of your income or the part of the price of something that you pay in tax
People who earn $180,000 to $280,000 will see their tax rates drop to 31% from 33% this year.
If you pay too much tax, you may get a
tax rebate (=an amount of money that is paid back to you). When someone uses illegal ways to pay less tax, this crime is called
tax evasion, but the use of legal methods to reduce a tax bill is called
tax avoidance.