Your property taxes go into a pool of money for the county to spend. They are not specifically used to pay for something you requested. A building permit is a fee, charged for something specific.
Not sure why people care what these things are called. However, I have observed that "tax" seems to have more of a negative connotation than "fee" to some people.
That's not what his definition claimed a tax was. Under his definition, a pool of not spent on everyone equally, must be a fee. So you've proven my point.
The reason for my particular pickiness on the words is because we have a law here that says unspent taxes are to returned. We're even getting a small refund this year.
(Send your driver's license number, the date it was issued and the date it's good until to your tax preparer to prove you lived in Colorado during the last tax year, by the way. Just sharing so you can include it since they'll call and ask anyway...there's other ways to prove residency, but the easiest is the DL and most tax preparers are using it unless someone can't provide one.)
Fees are not refundable. They're not the same thing under local law.
But in relation to the thread, I'm simply challenging his inaccurate definition of a tax vs a fee. They are not the same thing under national law, either.
And in the case of Colorado, you're entitled to a refund on over-collected unallocated taxes if politicians refuse to stand in public and ask for whatever they want to spend them on.
The lawyer/politicians created the specific legal differences, not I.
People are simply paying attention to what they define things as, since they play word games for a living, and it affects real things like the above-mentioned legally voted in, refunds.
If they stop playing word games (not likely), your assertion that nobody should care what we call them, is accurate.
