I disagree. Fees have to be justified and USCIS is not spending $100,000 to process a H1B applicant. They are raising revenue. Which is taxation.

Calling something a fee doesn't make it a fee if, in substance, it operates like a tax.

Fees don’t have to be limited to the cost of the specific transaction. Lots of agencies, not to mention the courts themselves, charge fees that go towards the operation of the agency and don’t just defray the specific costs of a single transaction.

In the NCTA case cited above, the Supreme Court upheld a law that authorized the FCC to impose “fees” on cable licensees that took into account the value of the license to the provider. So a fee need not be limited to the cost for an agency to process a license. A charge can be based on the value of the authorization or license provided and still qualify as a fee not a tax. FCC spectrum auctions are another example. The FCC charges billions of dollars for 4G/5G spectrum licenses. That’s based on value of the license to the licensees, not the cost of processing the licenses. Here, the $100k fee easily can be seen as reflecting the value to the employer of being able to hire the foreign worker.

> Fees have to be justified

Do they? Honest question. Is there a law that says fees must be in some sense justified?

> Calling something a fee doesn't make it a fee if, in substance, it operates like a tax.

This seems like a nonsense response to GP. They gave a definition of fee vs tax that is based on a meaningful distinction and not what it happens to be called.