What does fanum tax mean?

Fanum tax is slang for taking a portion of someone’s food — the idea that if you eat in front of friends, they’re entitled to a bite. It’s also used ironically as nonsense slang.

Fanum (Roberto Escanio) is a streamer and member of Kai Cenat’s AMP collective. He originated the ‘tax’ by jokingly taking his friends’ food on stream from around late 2022.

Why do people say ‘fanum tax’ randomly?

After the 2023 parody song ‘Sticking Out Your Gyatt for the Rizzler,’ the phrase got used ironically as pure brainrot nonsense, detached from its food meaning.

Specimen 075 · Actio alimentarii · Field Notes

Fanum Tax

Fanum tax is slang for taking a portion of someone’s food — the ‘unspoken rule’ that if you eat in front of friends, they get a bite. It’s named after streamer Fanum, and is now also used as pure nonsense in “brainrot” slang.

Where fanum tax came from

The term comes from Fanum (Roberto Escanio), a member of Kai Cenat’s streaming collective AMP. Starting around late 2022, Fanum would burst into streams and jokingly “tax” his friends’ food by taking a bite — a bit fans began calling the “Fanum tax.”

It spread through YouTube and TikTok clips in 2023, then exploded in October 2023 as part of the viral parody song “Sticking Out Your Gyatt for the Rizzler,” which bundled it with skibidi, sigma and rizz.

What it means and how it's used

Literally, to “fanum tax” someone is to take a share of their food (Fanum himself framed it as “feed your friend, bro — sometimes 5%, sometimes 10%”). It’s also stretched metaphorically to anything taken unfairly, and — thanks to the parody song — used as complete nonsense (“you’re so fanum tax”).

Sources

Merriam-Webster (slang, “fanum tax”) · Wikipedia, “Fanum tax” · Know Your Meme · TODAY.com · Complex. Replace with live links at launch.