Effects of taxes
Governments use different kinds of taxes and vary the tax rates.
This is done to distribute the tax burden among individuals or classes of the population involved in taxable activities, such as business, or to redistribute resources between individuals or classes in the population.
Modern social security systems are intended to support the poor, the disabled, or the retired by taxes on those who are still working.
In addition, taxes are applied to
influence the macroeconomic performance of the economy (the government's strategy for doing this is called its fiscal policy), or
to modify patterns of consumption or employment within an economy, by making some classes of transaction more or less attractive.