Tax collector

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the film, see Tax Collector (film).
"Tax man" redirects here. For the Beatles song, see Taxman. For other uses, see Taxman (disambiguation).
A tax collector at work – from an illustration by Henry Holiday in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876).

A tax collector (also called a taxman) is a person who collects unpaid

revenue agency. Tax collectors are often portrayed negatively, and in the modern world share a similar stereotype to that of lawyers.[citation needed
]

History

Historically taxes were collected directly by the

aristocrats
or dedicated tax collectors.

Ancient Rome

In the

publicani) paid the tax revenue to the government in advance and then kept the taxes collected from individuals. The publicani paid the tax revenue in coins, but collected the taxes using other exchange media, thus relieving the government of the work to carry out the currency conversion themselves.[1]

Christian Bible

Tax collectors, also known as

righteous" person. Matthew the Apostle in the New Testament was a tax collector.[3]

Historical tax collectors

Paying the Tax (The Tax Collector) oil on panel painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1620-1640
  • Simon Affleck - Was a Swedish tax official who worked in then Swedish-ruled Finland. Affleck is said to have been a ruthless collector of taxes with little pity towards the poor Finnish peasants. He is said to have shot himself in the head in his mansion to deny the Finnish peasants raiding his mansion the satisfaction of killing him.
  • Jacob Gaón - A Jewish Basque tax collector that in 1463, went to the province of Guipúzcoa in Spain and reclaimed a tax called pedido to the inhabitants of the villa of Tolosa. They refused, arguing they had an exemption from paying these tributes, according to fueros and laws passed by the previous kings. Gaón menaced them, and several Tolosans killed him, cut his head off and hung it up on the top of a pillory, as a punishment.
  • French nobleman and chemist who at the age of 26 bought a share in the Ferme générale, a tax farming financial company which advanced the estimated tax revenue to the royal government in return for the right to collect the taxes. Lavoisier was later convicted age 50 of tax fraud and executed at the guillotine
    .
  • Nika Riots
    in Constantinople. He fell from Justinian's grace, in part due to rivalries with other court officials and aristocrats and was stripped of his authority and exiled.

Modern tax collection

In modern times, collection is done by a dedicated government

tax collection agency
known as a revenue services, a revenue agency or a taxation authority.

Examples

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tax collectors in art.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Tax collector.
  1. JSTOR 23252728
    .
  2. JSTOR 30040992
    .
  3. ISBN 978-84-7225-384-1
    . Retrieved 7 April 2013.

Further reading
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