The BBC is obliged to collect it (through their contractor) but the government chooses how much is collected and how to spend the money. Some even goes to what you probably think of as privately owned local newspapers. When money was tight at Channel 4 (a publicly owned company that runs a TV channel with advertising and a very different remit from the BBC - the BBC's mission is to educate, while C4 is more about pushing boundaries, so that amazing wildlife documentary is from the BBC but the first soap opera to have a gay Muslim couple get married is probably C4) C4 were going to take some of the license fee money too.

Though in the end there is absolutely no difference.

In Sweden we are abandoning that concept because it is an unfair system and lots of people have switched to the internet for the same content (and don't even have a TV).

It's just semantics, sure, but it does mean the UK's largest broadcaster is not state-owned and has independence. That's important.

It does not. Politicians have absolute power over funding regardless. They decide exactly how much BBC can collect and in what circumstances (or they give BBC the mandate to do it themselves, but they can revoke or change that at will).

It is just one, insignificant, layer of indirection.

Who mandates the license fee? The government. So, it's a tax, and the BBC is both the state agency collecting the tax and the state agency funded by the tax.

This works on a national level. Switzerland does it too. But I don't want to read only Swiss Newspapers, I wanna read the NYT and The Times etc. as well. I do think that the digital pass idea is worth thinking about more.