Re: Completely remove tags?
In your front-page.php
<div id="hottags" role="main">
<h2><?php _e('Hot Tags'); ?></h2>
<p class="frontpageheatmap"><?php bb_tag_heat_map(); ?></p>
</div>
bb_tag_heat_map() is what you want to avoid.
A function call means some processing, involving database queries etc. You surely wants to remove all the unused stuff for top notch performance