Taxes, compulsory payments levied by the state on the population, organisations and enterprises. The socio-economic essence of taxes, their purpose and role in the economic and political life of society are determined by the social system. In capitalist society, taxes serve as an instrument for the class domination of the bourgeoisie, the main source of income of the bourgeois state, a means of additional exploitation of the working people and enrichment of capitalists. From 75 to 90 per cent of the taxes entering the budget of the bourgeois state are taxes levied on the population, while only 10 to 25 per cent are levied on private property and capital. Taxes in the United States, Britain, West Germany and France swallow up to 25-35, and even more per cent of the income of the average worker’s family. Alongside this, the bourgeois state grants privileges to the monopolies (see Monopolies, Capitalist) which, at the same time, conceal a considerable part of their taxable income, using commercial secret, falsification of accounts, etc. Therefore, the share of the bourgeois state’s income made up of corporate taxes is steadily falling. The bourgeois state hands back to the monopolies the profits withdrawn from them as taxes by granting them huge subsidies, fat military orders, by financing research and development, etc. The monopolies have vast opportunities to include the sum of the taxes they pay in the price at which their output is sold, thus, in the final analysis, shifting the tax burden on to the consumer, i. e., the broad working population. Under imperialism, taxes spiral, playing an increasing role as a means for redistributing the national income in the interests of monopoly capital. The tremendous resources obtained through taxation are used to step up the militarisation of the economy of the capitalist countries, to maintain the swelling state apparatus, and to expand the state regulation of the capitalist economy. Under capitalism, taxes are divided into direct and indirect. Indirect taxes are levied on the population by increasing the prices of necessities. In a socialist society, taxes are a means for planned distributing and redistributing part of the national income in accordance with the tasks involved in building communism. The socialist tax system differs drastically from the capitalist one. Receipts from the socialist economy, which constitute over 90 per cent of all budget resources, are the main source of revenues for the state budget of the USSR and those of other socialist countries. In the USSR, the state tax system includes: (1) income tax levied on cooperative enterprises and public organisations, paid from their profits; (2) income tax levied on collective farms raised from their net profit; (3) agricultural tax levied on collective farmers at fixed rates per one hundredth of a hectare held by them as a subsidiary individual plot regardless of the profits obtained from it; (4) income tax levied on the earnings of industrial and office workers, craftsmen and artisans. The tax policy of the Soviet state is directed at gradually increasing the non-taxable minimum income and expanding tax privileges.