Etymology

Tax

The word comes from the Latin for 'to touch,' as in to assess by handling.

Latin · 14th century

Latin

taxare (to evaluate, handle)

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Old French

taxer (to impose a levy)

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Middle English

taxen

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English

tax

The word "tax" entered English in the early fourteenth century from the Old French taxer, meaning to impose a levy or to assess a charge. The French word derived from the Latin taxare, meaning to evaluate, to appraise, or to handle, an intensive form of tangere, meaning to touch.1 A tax, in its deepest etymological sense, is what happens when the state reaches out and touches your property.

Taxation predates the word by thousands of years. The earliest known tax records are clay tablets from ancient Sumer, dating to around 3000 BC, documenting levies on grain and livestock.2 In ancient Egypt, scribes assessed taxes on cooking oil, grain, and property, with collectors making regular rounds. The Rosetta Stone, carved in 196 BC, records a tax decree issued by the priests of Memphis on behalf of Ptolemy V.3

3000 BC

Approximate date of the earliest known tax records, on Sumerian clay tablets.

England's Domesday Book, compiled in 1086 by order of William the Conqueror, was a comprehensive survey of landholdings and assets across the kingdom, created explicitly to determine what taxes were owed and by whom.4 The name "Domesday" (Day of Judgment) reflected the finality of its assessments, against which there was no appeal.

The modern income tax was introduced in Britain by William Pitt the Younger in 1799 to fund the Napoleonic Wars, levied at a rate of two shillings per pound (10%) on incomes above sixty pounds per year.5 The United States adopted a federal income tax during the Civil War in 1861, repealed it in 1872, and permanently established it through the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.6

Timeline

Around 3000 BC

Earliest known tax records appear on Sumerian clay tablets.

1086

William the Conqueror commissions the Domesday Book to assess taxable assets.

1799

Britain introduces income tax to fund the Napoleonic Wars.

1913

Sixteenth Amendment permanently establishes the federal income tax in the U.S.

Endnotes

1 Douglas Harper, "Tax," Online Etymology Dictionary.

2 Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, 2nd edition (Lanham: Madison Books, 1999).

3 British Museum, "The Rosetta Stone," collection history and description.

4 David Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

5 B. E. V. Sabine, A History of Income Tax (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966).

6 U.S. Constitution, Sixteenth Amendment, ratified February 3, 1913.