Originally Posted by
ajGoes
The bolding is mine.... What other kind of tax is there? Highly-paid political consultants
tweak language to push an agenda. Can we just call them "taxes"?
Ahh, yes. That was me typing fast and trying to replicate the "government taxes and fees" language that seems to be prevalent, and in which I assume the "government" specifier serves to differentiate the "fees" portion - e.g., the TSA fee vs. carrier-imposed fees.
In any case, call them whatever you want, the difference to me is that the costs that get passed back to the government are the same and relatively predictable across all carriers, so excluding them doesn't do much harm to the comparative shopping process for consumers. But if carrier-imposed fees can also be excluded from advertised prices, then that makes a big difference since they can vary greatly from one carrier to another, and at the end of the day are contributing to each carrier's bottom line.