Written by the group's lead guitarist, George Harrison, with some lyrical assistance from John Lennon, it protests against the higher level of progressive tax imposed in the United Kingdom by the Labour government of Harold Wilson, which saw the Beatles paying a 95% supertax.

Coinciding with the song's creation, Harrison learned that the band members' tax obligations were likely to lead to their bankruptcy, and he was outspoken in his opposition to the government using their income to help fund the manufacture of military weapons.

Drawing on 1960s soul/R&B musical influences, the song portrays the taxman as relentless in his pursuit of revenue, and mentions by name Wilson and Edward Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party.

"[6] As their earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, the Beatles were liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson's Labour government; hence the lyric "There's one for you, nineteen for me".

[10][nb 1] Aside from the financial imposition, "Taxman" was informed by Harrison's consternation that the vast sums the Beatles paid in tax were being used to fund the manufacture of military weapons.

[13] Harrison voiced this concern in his "How a Beatle Lives" interview with Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, in late February,[14] in addition to railing against all forms of authority and speaking out against the Vietnam War.

[48] The counting is delivered by Harrison in a "grim, miserly voice", according to Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould, and contrasts with a traditional count-in before a live performance.

[56] The solo uses what musicologist Alan Pollack describes as "fast triplets, exotic modal touches, and a melodic shape which traverses several octaves and ends with a breathtaking upward flourish".

[40] MacDonald writes that "Taxman" suggests the rhythmic influence of contemporaneous hit singles by James Brown, Lee Dorsey and the Spencer Davis Group,[19] while music journalist Rob Chapman views Harrison's guitar riff as similarly American R&B-derived, citing also the Stax Records band Booker T. & the M.G.'s.

[64][nb 11] Music critic Tim Riley states that in Harrison's off-tempo delivery and sneer, the spoken count-in on "Taxman" announced the "new studio aesthetic of Revolver".

[69] In a 1968 interview, Lennon referenced "Taxman" as part of the Beatles' anti-authoritarian outlook;[70] he said it was an "anti-establishment tax song" and that the band still protested against having to pay the government unless it was for a "communal or Communist or real Christian society".

[70][nb 12] The omission of "Taxman", along with any other Harrison-written track, was one of the main complaints that fans levelled against the Beatles' 1973 double LP 1962–1966, released three years after the group's break-up.

"[79][nb 14] Writing in The Village Voice, Richard Goldstein described Revolver as "revolutionary"[80] and the Beatles' "great leap forward", and highlighted "Taxman" as "the album's example of political cheek, in which George enumerates Britain's current economic woes".

[82] KRLA Beat's reviewer said it was "One of the best and most commercial George Harrison compositions for some time", adding: "It is also one of the best, most concise satirical comments on British society and the current tax situation (not to mention our own!)

[85] Alex Petridis of The Guardian considers it "faintly mind-boggling" that the Beatles departed from their usual approach to album tracks by issuing "Yellow Submarine" as a single from Revolver, saying that "Taxman" was one of the songs that would have been more worthy.

[87] In his commentary for the magazine, singer Joe Brown cited the track as a "brilliant example" of how, just as Harrison's guitar playing was often crucial in Lennon–McCartney compositions, he was never selfish in his musicianship but was instead motivated to "get the best for the song" each time.

"[87] On a similar list compiled by Rolling Stone in 2010, the song appeared at number 55, where the editors described it as "a crucial link between the guitar-driven clang of the Beatles' 1963–65 sound and the emerging splendor of the group's experiments in psychedelia".

They praised the solo as "a stunningly sophisticated creation, drawn from an Indian-derived Dorian mode and featuring descending pull-offs that recall Jeff Beck's work on the Yardbirds' 'Shapes of Things'" and said that while McCartney had played lead guitar on some previous Beatles tracks, "Taxman" was when he "[came] into his own as a guitarist".

[91] Writing in Rolling Stone's Harrison commemorative book, in January 2002, Mikal Gilmore recognised his incorporation of dissonance in the melody to "Taxman" and "I Want to Tell You" as having been "revolutionary in popular music" in 1966.

Gilmore considered this quality to be "perhaps more originally creative" than the avant-garde styling that Lennon and McCartney took from Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky and brought to the Beatles' work over the same period.

This was in response to his Democratic opponent, Bill Clinton, adopting a personal anecdote from his past as a student in England, detailing how he defended Starr in a Liverpool pub brawl, as part of his campaign rhetoric.

While debating the merits of reintroducing supertax in the UK, the writers warned against a return to the level imposed by Wilson, which they said, in support of Harrison's contention, "wasn't a fair progressive system.

However, he cites the song, along with the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon", as reflective of how the generation that had benefited from the implementation of postwar welfare policies and Keynesian economics in Britain were too quick to take them for granted by 1965, an approach he sees as enabling Margaret Thatcher's "neo-liberal revolution" of the 1980s.

[98] On 14 October 2022, a music video for the song directed by Danny Sangra was released on the band's official YouTube channel to promote the deluxe edition of Revolver.

[109] On the 2003 Songs from the Material World Harrison tribute album, former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman contributed a version that Johnny Loftus of AllMusic views as "effective, if not particularly memorable".

[110][nb 15] Cheap Trick's "Taxman, Mr Thief", from their 1977 eponymous debut album, is an homage to the Beatles' song,[111] dealing in similar lyrical themes.

[112] David Fricke of Rolling Stone similarly writes that the Jam "hijacked" the original recording's key "eccentric force ... in Harrison's hydraulic-R&B rhythm guitar", but did so "with love".