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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

It’s still a license or “fee”, not a tax. What changed is who they charge it from and how it’s collected (now through the same method as taxes).

The license being charged from every taxpayer and collected using tax collection mechanisms doesn’t make it a tax.

The difference is that a tax would be collected into the budget and SVT would be funded through the budget.

A license on the other hand is paid directly to the public service companies which (in theory) gives some amount of political independence.

So: license, not tax.

It might look to some like a useless distinction “how is money paid on my tax bill not a tax!?”, but there is an important difference.

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But its funded by the tax, ergo it literally is their tax money at work here.

But I just explained how the fee being on the tax bill does not make it a tax, since the definition would be “part of the tax budget” not “money collected the same way as taxes”.

Which part of what I’m saying are you disagreeing with, and why?

The distinction matters in some aspects – e.g. other government agencies can most probably not take the money collected for SVT/SR/UR and use it for other means.

However, a compulsory fee that is forced upon every adult that has an income, even if that person doesn’t own a TV and never utilize the services of SVT/SR/UR, then add to this that the fee is collected by the Swedish Tax Agency – to me that surely meets the definition of a tax.

I reject the universality of your definition. How the government spend the collected revenue can't (and isn't) the singular requirement on deciding wether something is a tax or a fee in many circumstances.

For example OECD has definitions they use when comparing tax revenue between countries, loosely explained here [0]. OECD count the public service fee as a fee, but I'm guessing that other things that your definition might categorise as fees are counted as taxes (e.g parts of the compulsory contribution to socialised welfare systems that the employer pays).

To further complicate things, the Swedish government via the ESV seem to categorise the public service fee as a tax [1]. EDIT: This probably describe the reasoning [2]

(But I don't think anyone would argue that e.g the church fee is a tax, since it's voluntary and the government have no ability to spend it at all, even though it's collected via the taxing system).

[0]: https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/oecd-classification-taxe... (p. 320) [1]: https://www.esv.se/contentassets/9d641ba02ce246189306a1c50a2... (p. 91). [2]: https://scb.se/contentassets/237f5d71840c4b6b84b147514dba4d3...

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