A way of thinking about this is that taxes and subsidies are basic tools government has to encourage/discourage behaviour. Since money is fungible, tax benefit

A way of thinking about this is that taxes and subsidies are basic tools government has to encourage/discourage behaviour. Since money is fungible, tax benefits are effectively subsidies offered to productive (in the tax sense) entities. You can try and draw a line between the two but in practice it's kind of inherently fuzzy: if government takes money from company A and nominally gives it to an arts program, everyone agrees it's a subsidy. If it takes the same money and uses it to cover a shortfall due to reducing company B's tax burden (i.e. an incentive) it's pretty similar. I suspect people who really contort themselves to draw a distinction have strong views about taxation as a whole which lead them to dislike the term subsidy, and want to have it not apply to government incentives they like to take advantage of.