Study and examinations in Italian

About a third of the way down sits le tasse universitarie, and the noun inside it is the one an English reader is likeliest to mistranslate on sight. La tassa does mean a tax — pagare le tasse is to pay one’s taxes, and that is the ordinary way to complain about them — but it also means a fee, a charge made by an institution for something it does for you, and that second job is the one it is doing here. Le tasse universitarie are tuition fees, and nothing in them is owed to the state. The trap runs on into the entry just above, l’esonero dalle tasse, which is not tax relief at all but a waiver of those fees for students on a low income. Italian does keep the two apart where it matters: l’imposta is the levy with nothing given back in return, the one on income or on what is sold, while la tassa hangs on a service received. On a university form, « tax » is simply the wrong word to think with.