Each tax rate can define a certain percentage which should be applied depending on some rules (country, state, post code).
A tax rate can have the following states:
When the state is set to Active the tax rate can be applied.
When the state is set to Inactive the tax rate is ignored. However, all the information is not deleted and you can reactivate it at any moment.
The tax rate is in the process of deletion. This may take some time until the tax rate is marked as Deleting before being marked as Deleted.
The tax rule is deleted. Since the tax rate is linked with data which cannot be deleted immediately, we need to keep it until all the data can be removed.