Definition of "tax"

In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […] Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay less tax. The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.

2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly‎, volume 188, number 23, page 19

In the expectation that such would be the case, I came but slightly attended, sending most of my people with the heavy baggage by sea to the Indus, and I took every precaution to render the tax of my support as light as possible, by furnishing a memorandum of the number of persons composing my suite, and limiting the amount of supplies each should receive.

1843, Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons - Volume 39, page 234

The extent of the traffic is a tax on the existing yard in the area at Frodingham, the busiest in the District.

1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 128

Flie far from hence All private taxes, immodest phrases, What e'r may but shew like vicious.

1616–1618, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Nathan Field, “The Queene of Corinth”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

Taxing the food and chemical industries, which make billions off our food consumption, could be another way to generate revenue for the program.

2018, Kristin Lawless, Formerly known as food, page 251

The people of the southeasterly clusters—concerning whom, however, but little is known—have a bad name as cannibals; and for that reason their hospitality is seldom taxed by the mariner.

1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […]

The heavy freight traffic which shares the double line between Paddington and Wolverhampton with the passenger traffic has taxed the ingenuity of the timetable planners.

1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 103

But patent applications are increasingly accompanied by volumes and volumes of data on DVD, which taxes the resources of the patent office.

2007 January 16, “IBM - Reinventing the invention system - United States”, in IDEAS from IBM‎