Corvee is the name of a type of taxes that are paid with work rather than money. In the case of corvee a worker will exact a day of work to pay for taxes. They will not get paid otherwise but the labor is not considered to be free labor because it is indeed paying for taxes that would have had to be paid another way if not in this way. The origins of the word corvee are French. This is a type of work that is pretty much a thing of the past.
It was favored in more historical societies in which the economy was one that used a bartering system. At these times in some societies it was more common to trade goods or labor to the things you needed or wanted as cash was in a short supply and did not hold the same value as it does in a present day society.