Airline Passengers hit with yet more tax hikes

We often feel in Britain that it is the motorist who is always being hit with increased taxes, but once again it is the airline passenger who is being hit with yet more taxes, this time from The EU. A new ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) came into effect on January 1st 2012.

So what does this mean for us travellers? Well short haul passengers will have to fork out an extra £2 per flight and long haul passengers £8 and this is on top of the existing UK Air Passenger Duty, which is set to rise yet again this year. ETS is not a one-off tax but a tax that will escalate each year. Given the current harsh economic climate this may mean that many families will no longer be able to enjoy a holiday abroad.

What irritates so many hard working people is the way governments try to sugar coat these taxes as so called ‘green’ taxes when we know only too well that most of the revenue goes straight into the treasury coffers and is nothing to do with being environmentally friendly whatsoever. Just imagine the majority of us saying, you know what, you’re right, we’re not going to use our cars or fly anymore. Can you picture the government’s horror at the potential loss in tax revenue!

However ETS was actually dreamt up by traders in The City so they could trade Carbon Credits and make billions of pounds every year. Mmm, sounds familiar. So it would seem when you delve below the surface a little, it really is nothing to do with offsetting carbon omissions and being green but rather another way for a few to make lots of money at the expense of the many.

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