[1718627440]

> 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]

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]

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]

> 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]

> 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 <[e-mail]>
    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".

[bpt3]

> I thought "taxes" is the English equivalent to the German "Steuern". A "Steuer" is definitely a thing to regulate inefficiencies due to external costs.

They are equivalent, but your English description of the definition of Steuern is not accurate, so I'm not sure what to tell you.

Your English is good enough that I wasn't 100% sure you weren't a native speaker, but there are a number of misunderstandings in the rest of your post that I don't think I'm going to be able to explain.

You're also just inventing reasons for taxes in many cases, rather than just accepting the government sees them as activities that create an opportunity to collect revenue.

[1718627440]

Seams like I'm wrong about the general term, which is weird since they tell that definition in several courses in my university. Part of the confusion is maybe that "Steuern" literally means "steerings".

I've found the term that I'm looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_tax . It's a bit weird, that most examples there seem to be from Germany or Switzerland. Maybe we just like that concept. But Piguo was a Brit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax

> but there are a number of misunderstandings in the rest of your post that I don't think I'm going to be able to explain.

Too bad.

> You're also just inventing reasons for taxes in many cases

Most of these are also listed as examples in the Wikipedia articles, the other are very much the official reasoning for these taxes, so I don't agree with that. Of course the government doesn't mind taking some money.