As much as I like the idea of
anyone but merich and evil individuals and corporations paying more taxes, wouldn’t this result in airlines dumping the extra cost on customers and in private planes being registered in some tax haven (and leaving the EU every six months to avoid taxation, quite possibly flying empty)?I mean… I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad idea… I’m just saying that “studies” that just calculate how much could be made from some policy change as if the increased tax revenue was the only consequence are not solid bases for policy change.
Can’t you make that argument for any tax? That’s not really how it works. They charge as much as they can based on supply and demand. They can’t just increase prices or they already would have. They aren’t setting the price where it is to be nice.
You typically don’t pay these taxes where you register your plane, but where you land/take off and in which country you fly.
So it may reduce the number of flights (esp. empty flights), which is actually good.
If the money is reinvested to develop high speed trains, the impact on tourism would even be minimal.
If the tax is on fuel then it wouldnt matter where they are registered, they’d be getting refueled in the EU and so would pay the tax.
wouldn’t this result in airlines dumping the extra cost on customers
yes, partially. If the increase in tax results in a particular flight being £50 more expensive for example they will rise prices by an amount. But it likely wont be the full 50 as airlines are already charging what they think the optimum price is, the price going up is likely to result in less sales.
It also incentivises the airlines to be more fuel efficient (and so less damaging to the climate), and punishes worse offenders like private jets more as the use more fuel per passenger mile.
