First Source Corporation

impôt [ɛ̃po]

( = taxe) tax

• payer des impôts to pay tax

• je paye plus de 10 000 € d'impôts I pay more than 10,000 euros in tax

• impôt direct/indirect/déguisé direct/indirect/hidden tax

• impôt retenu à la source tax deducted at source

• faire un bénéfice de 10 000 € avant impôt to make a profit of 10,000 euros before tax

► impôt sur les bénéfices tax on profits

► impôt sur le chiffre d'affaires tax on turnover

► impôt foncier ≈ land tax

► impôt sur les grandes fortunes wealth tax

► impôts locaux local taxes

► impôt sur les plus-values ≈ capital gains tax

► impôt sur le revenu income tax

► impôt sur les sociétés corporation tax

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The main taxes in France are income tax ( l'impôt sur le revenu), value-added tax on consumer goods (« la TVA »), local taxes funding public amenities ( les impôts locaux) and two kinds of company tax (« la taxe professionnelle », l'impôt sur les sociétés).

Income tax can either be paid in three instalments (the first two, known as « tiers provisionnels », are estimates based on the previous year's tax, while the third makes up the actual tax due), or in monthly instalments (an option known as « mensualisation »). Late payment incurs a 10% penalty known as a « majoration ».

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nom masculin tax

- impôt additionnel

- impôt foncier

- impôt sur les plus-values

- impôt sur le revenu

- impôt sur les sociétés

- impôts locaux

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1. nm

1) (taxe spécifique) tax

2)

2. impôts nmpl

(= contributions) tax sg

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impôt

A nm

1 ( prélèvement) tax; payer ses impôts to pay one's taxes; payer 2 000 € d'impôts to pay €2,000 in tax; avant/après impôt before/after tax; impôt direct/indirect direct/indirect tax; impôt progressif/proportionnel progressive/proportional tax;

2 ( fiscalité) l'impôt taxation.

B impôts nmpl ( institution) les impôts tax (sg); réduire les impôts to reduce tax; payer des impôts to pay tax.

impôt additionnel surtax; impôt sur les bénéfices corporation tax; impôt sur le capital tax on capital; impôt foncier property tax; impôt sur la fortune wealth tax; impôt sur les grandes fortunes, IGF ≈ wealth tax; impôt indiciaire wealth-related tax; impôts locaux local taxes; impôt sur le patrimoine inheritance tax; impôt sur les plus-values capital gains tax; impôt de quotité proportional tax; impôt sur le revenu income tax; impôt sur le revenu des personnes physiques, IRPP personal income tax; impôt sur les sociétés corporate tax, company tax; impôt de solidarité sur la fortune, ISF ≈ wealth tax.

ⓘ Impôt sur le revenu A tax payable on income (but not deducted at source) which may be paid in three instalments in arrears or on a monthly basis. An annual tax return ( la déclaration d'impôts) must be completed as part of the process.

[ɛ̃po] nom masculin

1. [prélèvement] tax

écrire/aller aux impôts (familier) [à l'hôtel des impôts] to write to/to go and see the tax people

2. (figuré & littéraire)

These are taxes levied to finance local, departmental or regional government. The best-known are the taxe d'habitation (paid by rent-paying tenants), the taxe foncière (paid by homeowners) and the taxe professionnelle (levied on businesses). The rate of each tax is decided at local level.

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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After receiving his education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Bacon served with C.A. Parsons at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1925 to 1940. From 1946 to 1956 he carried out research on Hydrox fuel cells at Cambridge University and was a consultant on fuel-cell design to a number of organizations throughout the rest of his life.

Sir William Grove was the first to observe that when oxygen and hydrogen were supplied to platinum electrodes immersed in sulphuric acid a current was produced in an external circuit, but he did not envisage this as a practical source of electrical energy. In the 1930s Bacon started work to develop a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that operated at moderate temperatures and pressures using an alkaline electrolyte. In 1940 he was appointed to a post at King's College, London, and there, with the support of the Admiralty, he started full-time experimental work on fuel cells. His brief was to produce a power source for the propulsion of submarines. The following year he was posted as a temporary experimental officer to the Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment at Fairlie, Ayrshire, and he remained there until the end of the Second World War.

In 1946 he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, receiving a small amount of money from the Electrical Research Association. Backing came six years later from the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC), the development of the fuel cell being transferred to Marshalls of Cambridge, where Bacon was appointed Consultant.

By 1959, after almost twenty years of individual effort, he was able to demonstrate a 6 kW (8 hp) power unit capable of driving a small truck. Bacon appreciated that when substantial power was required over long periods the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell associated with high-pressure gas storage would be more compact than conventional secondary batteries.

The development of the fuel-cell system pioneered by Bacon was stimulated by a particular need for a compact, lightweight source of power in the United States space programme. Electro-chemical generators using hydrogen-oxygen cells were chosen to provide the main supplies on the Apollo spacecraft for landing on the surface of the moon in 1969. An added advantage of the cells was that they simultaneously provided water. NRDC was largely responsible for the forma-tion of Energy Conversion Ltd, a company that was set up to exploit Bacon's patents and to manufacture fuel cells, and which was supported by British Ropes Ltd, British Petroleum and Guest, Keen \& Nettlefold Ltd at Basingstoke. Bacon was their full-time consultant. In 1971 Energy Conversion's operation was moved to the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, as Fuel Cells Ltd. Bacon remained with them until he retired in 1973.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology

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After his initial engineering education at Kiev Polytechnic, Shoenberg went to London to undertake further studies at the Royal College of Science. In 1905 he returned to Russia and rose to become Chief Engineer of the Russian Wireless Telegraphy Company. He then returned to England, where he was a consultant in charge of the Patent Department and then joint General Manager of the Marconi Wireless Telegraphy Company (see Marconi). In 1929 he joined the Columbia Graphophone Company, but two years later this amalgamated with the Gramophone Company, by then known as His Master's voice (HMV), to form EMI (Electric and Musical Industries), a company in which the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had a significant shareholding. Appointed Director of the new company's Research Laboratories in 1931, Shoenberg gathered together a team of highly skilled engineers, including Blumlein, Browne, Willans, McGee, Lubszynski, Broadway and White, with the objective of producing an all-electronic television system suitable for public broadcasting. A 150-line system had already been demonstrated using film as the source material; a photoemissive camera tube similar to Zworykin's iconoscope soon followed. With alternate demonstrations of the EMI system and the mechanical system of Baird arranged with the object of selecting a broadcast system for the UK, Shoenberg took the bold decision to aim for a 405-line "high-definition" standard, using interlaced scanning based on an RCA patent and further developed by Blumlein. This was so successful that it was formally adopted as the British standard in 1935 and regular broadcasts, the first in the world, began in 1937. It is a tribute to Shoenberg's vision and the skills of his team that this standard was to remain in use, apart from the war years, until finally superseded in 1985.

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See also: Baird, John Logie; Campbell-Swinton, Alan Archibald