Political Memes

The "tax" part is what you pay above what the cost of a Product or Service would be if there wasn't a Monopoly, Cartel or legal structure forcing you to acquire that product or service.

The actual cost of making and/or providing that Product or Service (plus a bit of profit to incentivise somebody to actual do it) is the part that serves that purpose (and thus can be said to be "earmarked for a specific purpose"), anything above that is just money you are forced to put in the pocked of somebody for holding a dominant market position due to natural or artificial market barriers and/or even having bough politicians to tilt that market in their favor, killing the viability of alternative products or services or even legally forcing you to acquire that product or service.

That "above natural cost" part of what people are forced to pay for essentials like housing is not earmarked for anything (since it does not go into the costs of the other side to provide you that Product or Service or the profit margin needed to incentivise somebody to do it), plus unlike taxes payed to the Public it will never come back and provide you with any benefit and even in a Democratic system you have no control whatsoever over what it is used for unlike one's traditional taxes where theoritically (the more trully Democratic a nation is, the more it is so in practice) one has some influence in how it gets uses through the vote.

But sure, you can call the part that is used to actually pay the costs of the Products and Services plus a fair profit margin, to be a deduction if you want (personally I just think of it as natural cost of living). Personally I see that part as totally fair, so not at all an unfair burden, whilst more broadly politically I actually favor a system were life's essentials are take care of for all from the common pot which is the taxes paid to the public, in this specific point I'm restricting myself to a pure Trade logic.