Since it's probably not clear to most HN readers, this is maintained by the Swedish public broadcaster (SVT: Sveriges Television) which provides a video streaming service (similar to BBC iPlayer) at https://www.svtplay.se
As a Swede I was not expecting the (for us familiar) SVT abbreviation to show up here. I definitely expected that it was some other org with the same name! Nice surprise.
It used to be a license but then they switched to taking the money directly from every tax paying adult, thus increasing their budget with a couple of billion SEK.
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).
In the long run it would've. It was mandatory to pay if you owned a TV. They tried to collect it for people having laptops / mobile phones but it was ruled illegal in the courts.
Instead the government replaced it with a new tax which seems more fair.
I would say so, yes. As another commentator said they tried to get more people to pay but failed and then instead used corrupt politicians to do their bidding.
The documentation has a story about how the project came about (as a replacement for the proprietary system they were using) https://svt.github.io/encore-doc/#projecthistory