Tax collector

Tax collector
A tax collector at work – from an illustration by Henry Holiday in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876).

A tax collector is a person who collects unpaid taxes from other people or corporations. Tax collectors are often portrayed in fiction as being evil, and in the modern world share a somewhat similar stereotype to that of lawyers.

Contents

Tax collectors in the Bible

Tax collectors, also known as publicans, are mentioned many times in the Bible (mainly in the New Testament). They were working for tax farmers. They are generally described as being greedy, and taking more money than they are entitled to. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus sympathises with the tax collector Zacchaeus, causing outrage from the crowds that Jesus would rather be the guest of a sinner than of a more respectable or "righteous" person.

Modern tax collection agencies

National tax collection agencies include the Canada Revenue Agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK, or the Australian Taxation Office.

Notable tax collectors

Biblical

Historical

See also


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • tax collector — UK US noun [C] GOVERNMENT, TAX ► someone whose job is to collect taxes for the government. The term is often used to refer to the tax authorities: »The company spent a lot of energy trying to outrun the tax collector …   Financial and business terms

  • tax collector — index assessor Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 …   Law dictionary

  • tax collector — noun someone who collects taxes for the government • Syn: ↑taxman, ↑exciseman, ↑collector of internal revenue, ↑internal revenue agent • Hypernyms: ↑bureaucrat, ↑administrative official * * * …   Useful english dictionary

  • tax collector — noun One who has the responsibility for collecting taxes. After the assessment has been made the file passes to the tax collector. Syn: taxman …   Wiktionary

  • tax collector — tax col.lector n someone who works for the government and makes sure that people pay their taxes …   Dictionary of contemporary English

  • tax collector — Synonyms and related words: Internal Revenue Service, accumulator, assessor, bill collector, collection agent, collector, connoisseur, customhouse, customs, douanier, dunner, exciseman, farmer, gatherer, magpie, miser, pack rat, publican,… …   Moby Thesaurus

  • tax collector — one who takes tax payments, one who takes taxes …   English contemporary dictionary

  • tax collector — A public officer, elected or appointed, acting in a ministerial capacity in the collection of taxes. 51 Am J1st Tax § 996 …   Ballentine's law dictionary

  • tax collector — /ˈtæks kəlɛktə/ (say taks kuhlektuh) noun an official who collects taxes …  

  • Confessions of a Tax Collector —   …   Wikipedia

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