Taxation

How to spell taxation

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce taxation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does taxation mean?

1. nounThe system or process by which a government levies financial charges on citizens and businesses.

Taxation in a sentence

• The new budget raised taxation on imported goods.

• Small business owners often complain about the burden of taxation.

Where does taxation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word goes back to the Latin verb taxare, meaning 'to assess, appraise, or evaluate', which was itself a frequentative form of tangere, 'to touch'. The idea was that an assessor 'touched on' or handled a thing to judge its worth, and from that grew the sense of fixing a charge against it. The Latin noun taxatio described this act of valuing, and English took it through Old French taxation in the 1300s. By the time it settled into English it referred specifically to the levying of money charges by an authority. The same taxare root also gave us the plain word 'tax', so the spelling stays reassuringly regular: the bare word 'tax' plus the familiar '-ation' ending.

How the word is built

• tax- (from Latin taxare: to assess or appraise)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix indicating an action or process)