[Shevach]

AV1 enables to omit transmission of skip flags. Indeed, there is the frame-header parameter 'skip_mode_present' and if this parameter equals to 1 then the skip flags are not signalled. The rationale is clear, if we know 'a priory' that encoding of a given frame will not produce skip blocks then it's redundant to transmit skip flags.
Let's look at the situation from another view, what's a penalty in transmission of skip flags provided that all blocks are non-skipped?
Because i am not completely familiar with AV1 entropy coding process i consider AVC/HEVC arithmetic engine instead.
In HEVC/AVC the maximal probability of a symbol is ~0.98 and hence the number of bits produced by encoding a symbol having the maximal probability is -log2(0.98) = ~0.02 bits.
Let's suppose that we know ahead that all MBs will be no-skipped (i.e. skip_flag = 0 for each MB) and consequently the skip_flag syntax element gets maximal probability 0.98. In such case the total number of bits consumed by all skip flags is ~0.02 x Number_Mbs.
For example, HD resolution frame has usually 8100 MBs (16x16 grid) and hence the total size of all skip_flag syntax elements is ~8100 x 0.02 = 162 bits. It's negligible in most cases.
Probably AV1 frame level parameter 'skip_mode_present' (to disable transmission of skip flags) has a minimal impact on coding efficiency, although it increases the decoding complexity (more 'if-else').