So it’s a compulsory contribution to state revenue levied by the government and added to the cost of the service? Because that’s what a tax is…

> a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits, or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.

Sounds like it's not compulsory though? The ISP is perfectly welcome to lay their lines via private lands (having negotiated permission with each landowner, naturally) if they'd prefer.

Well it’s not compulsory to pay your vehicle registration tax either, if you only want to drive your vehicle on private land.

I wouldn't consider that a "tax" either if that's all it's for. Do you consider national park entrance passes to be a tax?

Contrived arguments about whether something is a tax or a user fee has been a feature of politically motivated spin since basically forever. I would say any essential service (like access to internet, roads, healthcare, etc…) that requires for money to be paid to the government is taxes. There is no way to get access to the internet without paying these taxes to the government, and your suggestion to implement a private-land-only infrastructure is silly. There is no contiguous area of private land between my house and an ISP POP that doesn’t cross over publicly owned land. That’s almost certainly true for you too, and anybody else who’s reading this.

> I would say any essential service (like access to internet, roads, healthcare, etc…) that requires for money to be paid to the government is taxes. There is no way to get access to the internet without paying these taxes to the government, and your suggestion to implement a private-land-only infrastructure is silly. There is no contiguous area of private land between my house and an ISP POP that doesn’t cross over publicly owned land.

If it's both an essential service and effectively impossible to implement without making use of public land (and I don't disagree), then there's no reasonable basis for it to be a private industry operation at all. These ISPs can't have it both ways.

Most taxes and fees from an ISP or telco have absolutely nothing to do with passing over public property. Many telco fees are in portion or in full a profit for the provider!

> Sounds like it's not compulsory though? The ISP is perfectly welcome to lay their lines via private lands (having negotiated permission with each landowner, naturally) if they'd prefer.

Streets cut cities into small islands of private lands. Therefore, you cannot reach anyone without crossing the public right of way.

Perhaps mere crossing should be treated as de minimis. But when you're closing and digging up the public street for days at a time, or perhaps even running your lines through publicly-maintained conduits and accessing them through publicly-maintained manholes, you're taking a lot more from the commons than that.

It's not compulsory. It's a fee for access to public rights of way. If the ISP doesn't want to pay the fee, they are free to figure out a way to provide connectivity without access to the public right of way.

And on that note...my ISP (Starry) does exactly that. They don't use the public rights of way so they don't have to charge many of the franchise fees that Comcast et al do.

A royalty, paid to a government, as a condition of business?

Yes, I’d call it a sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc. based on what it was grounded in.

To put this as an example of why your logic doesn't work: it would mean that an utility bill is just a bill if paid to Comcast or Pacific Gas, but a tax if paid to a publicly-owned utility like LADWP for exactly the same services.

A bill isn't a tax just because it's a bill from the government.

Royalty != bill. When I pay the DMV to get replacement license plates, that's likewise not a tax just because the DMV is the government.

As a tax lawyer, you may not be allowed to call them taxes. Since I'm not one, I can apply the common sense definition, rather than the technical one.