[oneplane]

Using the word 'tax' here is like calling anything that you need to pay for 'tax'. If you put a bit of money in a vending machine to buy some chocolate, you don't call that vending machine tax, do you?

If you were to scope it to 'services' or 'platform', then perhaps we should call virtual hosting cost not cost but tax :p and if you rent a movie, that'd then be movie tax, or rental tax? But what about actual tax, are we going to call that tax tax? Because at this point people just start using the word tax for every generic transaction.

[juiyout]

In your vending machine example, it is a transaction, not a tax, as you implied and I agree. However Apple taking cut of app's revenue is awfully a lot like corporate tax.

[oneplane]

In that case are transaction fees for credit cards also tax? Or PayPal fees for that matter? Or fees for using platforms like eBay and Aliexpress?

[Dylan16807]

Yes, I'd call any small mostly-percentage-based transaction fee that a platform imposes a "tax" or "platform tax".