Compulsory payments in favor of the state all over the world are called taxes and fees. Many people confuse these concepts, but there are significant differences between them.
Various taxes and fees are the main component of the budget of any civilized state, its main income. However, do not confuse and confuse these two "fiscal" concepts. After all, any tax is a purely mandatory payment, carried out on a gratuitous basis to the country's treasury.
A fee is a special fee that occurs only in the case of a type of activity that falls under well-defined characteristics, such as the use of natural objects, air and environmental pollution, various types and forms of licensing.
Tax
Any type of tax has a number of specific characteristics, which are customary to include impersonality, gratuitousness and inevitability, that is, obligation. All funds received in this way in the treasury go to the implementation of any kind of social programs and other activities. Unlike the notorious taxes, fees do not possess the characteristic of impersonality, because their very essence consists in the assignment of rights to the person who made this type of payment.
The main function of taxes is the formation of the state budget, the accumulation of funds that then go to the expenditure side. Taxes are involved in a kind of redistribution of finances between all citizens of the state, transferring them from richer people to poorer ones; this is the distribution function of taxes.
Through taxes, the state controls the work of individuals and legal entities conducting any activity on its territory, even if it is a simple daily trip to work. Taxes are also the main regulator of achieving special social and economic goals of the country, spelled out and legalized in a special document, the tax code.
Fees
Another distinctive feature that distinguishes between the concept of taxes and the concept of fees is the frequency of their payment, if taxes are paid regularly, then the fees are usually a one-time payment.
In contrast to the traditional division of tax payments into purely regional, federal and local taxes, levies are only a concept of the “federal” level. They cannot differentiate in terms of rates and benefits at the local level, according to the decision of the municipal authorities, fees are a strictly fixed phenomenon that goes to the budget of the highest level. The introduction of additional fees by local governments, which implies payment to the budgets of a lower level, is absolutely illegal.
