[filleokus]

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...