Flight Tax Increase

[Andy B]

Gordon Brown has just announced an increase in flight tax it will be doubled. Interesting that the extra charges put on by airlines can be many tens of pounds when the airline tax is only £20 for a flight to the USA. I wonder if some will use this as an excuse for increasing their charges by more than this tax increase..

[PaulaK]

Why does that not surprise me :rolleyes:. It's probably to cover the extra £600m for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq he's just promised.

[Keith]

must not rant.. must not rant... :lol:

yeah absolutely daft and sad to say, what's the betting that virgin with its new profits to green fuel etc. policies will be first in line to raise the taxes (by more than the tax rise) and probably the prices.

[Andy B]

PS petrol fuel tax goes up tonight 1.25p per litre. The flight tax increase is from February.

[ukwdwnut]

notice they didnt lower the tax from the hike last year b'cos of the high price of oil, now that its cheaper it should be lowered not highered even more. we should boycot all flights for a year and then see how they get on :D

[disneydaft2]

Why does that not surprise me :rolleyes:. It's probably to cover the extra £600m for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq he's just promised.

And the £20 Billion for the nukes. :rolleyes:

[Redkop]

this is to save them increasing income tax and dont forget MP's demanded a pay rise :rolleyes:

[Keith]

this is to save them increasing income tax and dont forget MP's demanded a pay rise :rolleyes:

yeah 60% rise to over 100K before expenses etc. Never mind them voting on their own pay rises, they should let *US* vote on their pay awards. All this performance related stuff they say when public service workers ask for pay awards, lets have a bit of that going on for MPs!

[Redkop]

yeah 60% rise to over 100K before expenses etc. Never mind them voting on their own pay rises, they should let *US* vote on their pay awards. All this performance related stuff they say when public service workers ask for pay awards, lets have a bit of that going on for MPs!

well yes but i bet you a disney dollar it never happens :lol:

[PaulaK]

£100k?! Now I definitely want my £2 back :lol:

[babybelle]

Oh dear, I must be the only semi-greenie on board who thinks this is somewhat defensible.

I can understand folk thinking why do we need to pay tax on this when we blow £x billion on defence etc but as a Tourism graduate I firmly believe we need to be accountable for our 'conspicuous consumerism'

Tourism flights are amongst the biggest polluters out and while we love our holidays I for one believe we need to be accountable for our consumerism today to ensure our kids and their kids enjoy the same priveleges.

For those of us that can afford Disney holidays, I really dont think an additional £5-£10 per flight is too much to pay to ensure our grandkids are afforded the same benefits.

'tin hat at the ready'

[Redkop]

baby i agree but we pay so much otherwise, my car is a 5 star green car for company tax but i am going to have pay more for my diesel again but i have a car that complies with current EU rules, it just seems a tax because of people using cheap airlines so they better make money off them

[babybelle]

baby i agree but we pay so much otherwise, my car is a 5 star green car for company tax but i am going to have pay more for my diesel again but i have a car that complies with current EU rules, it just seems a tax because of people using cheap airlines so they better make money off them


I agree there are many cheap flights but they pay the same tax - we all love our luxuries, maybe it's time we all took stock of our priorities :whistle: The folk that take cheap flights generally go shorter distances (perhaps more frequently). Long haul flights are major factors in pollution - I believe if we want to travel further a field we shoul pay the economic and environmental price. I mean what is an extra $10 really to those of us who can afford far flung holidays others can only dream of :thumbs:

Using cheap holidays is merely as the cause is somewhat a deflection, we need to realise our 'throwaway society has a major impact on the environment

[Redkop]

baby i had an arguement in work last week, before i flew to florida i drove to aberdeen and charged my company over £100 in petrol, last week i flew from liverpool for £17.50, even with the new charges it would be £22.50 what is my company going to recommend, and i think the govt know that the majority of short haul people are buisness people on expensies

[Keith]

For those of us that can afford Disney holidays, I really dont think an additional £5-£10 per flight is too much to pay to ensure our grandkids are afforded the same benefits.

'tin hat at the ready'

no need for the tin hat I'm sure :) but it's not just 5-10 per flight, it's everywhere :( fuel tax, airline passenger tax, pollution taxes, petrol taxes, road tax.... taxes everywhere on people driving to work, to earn money to pay their OTHER taxes and for a holiday when they're hit again.

All this and where's the money going? is there any guarantee that the next generation of kids will be any better off? or do we even know what net effect the reduction in "pollution" will really have?

I'm betting that in 10 years we'll have poured billions of our money into all this, "pollution" will have decreased in some countries and we'll probably have to try and pay off emerging economies not to increase theirs. (China/India are already producing more than 50% of consumer items in certain fields and there's no sign of that going anywhere but up. Think they're going to want to reduce their emissions and put up the cost of the goods ;-).

For all that, in 10 years I bet the climate changes that people are seeing have continued with no change.

The current green movement is, in my opinion, a purely political game that people are buying into :( It's great for politicians. If you support green taxes, people don't feel like they can really argue against you, so provided you get in there first, you're onto a winner.

I read a book sometime ago, can't remember the title but it was about the human tendancy to focus on trendy/attractive/fixable issues instead of dealing with the real current problems. You know the sort of thing, you can't find/kill bin laden so you invade another country with an identifiable leader who you can find and lock up ;) hope everyone forgets you've failed on the primary task. Kinda sums up the green stuff to me.... enough nukes to blow up the world many times, poor/starving people all over the world, homeless people, waiting lists for essential operations on the NHS etc. etc. etc. but lets spend all our money on the trendy green issues.

I'm not saying we should concentrate solely on current issues, we will one day simply run out of carbon fuels so by all means let's get alternative fuels going :) but then as we all know, we already have hydrogen based cars and other alternatives which aren't going anywhere until the all the rich oil folks decide they can't make any more money out of it.

So nah, I don't want to pay any trendy green taxes at the moment, we've all got other things we should be worried about

[Andy B]

baby i had an arguement in work last week, before i flew to florida i drove to aberdeen and charged my company over £100 in petrol, last week i flew from liverpool for £17.50, even with the new charges it would be £22.50 what is my company going to recommend, and i think the govt know that the majority of short haul people are buisness people on expensies

If the flight was full the polution per jorney may well be less than that generated by say 120 car journeys.

[Wendy L]

For those of us that can afford Disney holidays, I really dont think an additional £5-£10 per flight is too much to pay to ensure our grandkids are afforded the same benefits.



The thing is it's not £5 - £10 per flight though :sigh:

For long haul flights it's going to be an extra £20 per person in Economy which puts it up to £40 PP passenger tax and in business class, so PE on Virgin will be affected it is going to rise to £80 PP. For a family of 4 in economy that's going to add an extra £80, in PE - £160 for a family of 4 and whichever way you look at it, it's a lot of money.

I tend to agree with Keith, it's evolution and yes before anyone throws something at me :afraid: pollution is probably not helping, but I can't see that adding all these extra taxes is going to help :shrug: I personally think it's just a way for the government to make more money, after all there are a lot of people who are giving up smoking - they need to get their taxes from somewhere!

[Redkop]

If the flight was full the polution per jorney may well be less than that generated by say 120 car journeys.


the flight wasnt full either way

[Dawn]

:overhere: I'm a greenie too Babybelle.

I don't mind paying a bit extra if it means less pollution. But it doesn't seem to mean less pollution - just more tax we have to pay. And as Keith mentioned it's no good us saying we'll save the planet if countries like China, India AND America don't pull their weight too.

It's evolution but is it positive? It worries me intensely. What kind of planet will I hand over to my son. I read something that said the great apes will be extinct in 30 years due to human evolution. If we can't save the great apes then what hope do we have? :shrug:

*puts on tin helmet and cowers with Babybelle* :lol:

[Whitequeen]

I'm not really sure why we're all so surprised.:lol:
To win the election Labour banged on about not raising taxes...blah....blah.....blah. etc. etc. etc. and for a while.............they didn't, but (even I realise) the money has to come from somewhere so Gordon got his 'Big Taxables' book down off the shelf and he and his pixie treasury helpers went down the list.
Alcohol? Hhhmmmm.....we do that every year, better leave that one for a while.
Tobacco? Yeah, we'll chuck a bit more on that. Shooting ourselves in the foot but hey! It's for the enviroment.
Petrol? Dodgy, that one. Reminds people of the 'War'. Better leave that one a while.:unsure:
VAT? Hhhhmmmm. 17.5% is more than tax on a Disney room, better leave that as it is.
I KNOW!!! We haven't finished hitting the holidaymaker yet!!! They won't notice a bit extra on their already extortionate priced vacations. Yeah, let's go with that one seeing as how we are insisting on children not having holidays in term time we can use that money to give them an extra computer to play on in school. See! Incentive!!!:D

[Andy B]

Taxes are a very thorny subject as we all want to pay less overall but all want lots of services provided by the Government. I believe that all politicians find it easy to put a tax on a item or service like flights but difficult to do a review of spending and say for instance that the health service is covering a far wider scope than it was intended for and such things as fertility treatment and gender reassignment is of no benefit to the nation and so should not be paid for by the state. (inset your subject here).

With regard to green transport etc. I have no objection to paying for poluting but for UK travel costs should not be increased without puting in place a low cost green alternative. What is the point in saying we want people out of cars but making it more expensive to travel on busses or trains because they are too crowded.

With overseas developing countries it is very difficult to say you cannot have an improved way of life because we do not want you to produce more polutants and it is a truism that they will have to go through a dirty period of expansion to get to greener ways but perhaps the green taxes of developed countries could be used to help them become greener during their development.

It is true the US Government does not seem to support environmental measures such as Kyoto, this may have something to do with the political funding from Oil companies. However many states cities and individuals do recognise the problem and are making their own steps to a cleaner world. Do not blame Americans blame The American (Bush).

[Dawn]

It is true the US Government does not seem to support environmental measures such as Kyoto, this may have something to do with the political funding from Oil companies. However many states cities and individuals do recognise the problem and are making their own steps to a cleaner world. Do not blame Americans blame The American (Bush).

He was democratically elected. And then re-elected. :shrug:

The first thing he did was renege on Kyoto after Clinton had pledged support. :hissy:

It's all about oil money. :shrug:

[JuniorMickey]

He was democratically elected. And then re-elected. :shrug:
Personally, I didn't vote for him either time (nor his brother) and I totally agree that anything a democrat says is good, Bush will go against.

I bought a new car almost 2 years ago. I wanted a hybrid but it was double the price of the Dodge Neon I ended up with. I couldn't afford a $30,000 car :shrug:

[ukwdwnut]

chris they did the same here promoting diesel fuel in cars, it was cheaper than petrol, does many more mpg, then when loads of people bought them they hiked the price up and now it more expensive than petrol. no matter who they are you cant trust a politician ever. now they are talking of making us pay for every mile we drive on certain roads :hissy: as if the motorist doesnt pay enough here. its also reported that the road fund license we get charged, out of all the millions collected only 5% of that gets spent on maintaining the roads

[steery1]

Its all very commendable agreeing to pay a few extra pounds more for flights to Orlando. But people have to save for years to afford their holiday and some cannot afford to fork out any more.

I agree with previous posts that in the grand scheme of things what we in the little UK do makes absolutely no difference if USA, India China etc dont do the same. Percentage-wise we're nowhere near as big polluters as these guys.

Global warming will happen anyway IMHO. The earth does get warmer over time, it also cools down. Thats just the way it is.

And as has been said before, we're getting hit from all angles under the now trendy green umbrella. There really are lots of more immediate problems that I am worried about especially the state of our hospitals.
God forbid I get ill. Im afraid if I have to go to hospital I'll never come out.
You end up worse than when you went in

[ukwdwnut]

Its all very commendable agreeing to pay a few extra pounds more for flights to Orlando. But people have to save for years to afford their holiday and some cannot afford to fork out any more.

I agree with previous posts that in the grand scheme of things what we in the little UK do makes absolutely no difference if USA, India China etc dont do the same. Percentage-wise we're nowhere near as big polluters as these guys.

Global warming will happen anyway IMHO. The earth does get warmer over time, it also cools down. Thats just the way it is.

And as has been said before, we're getting hit from all angles under the now trendy green umbrella. There really are lots of more immediate problems that I am worried about especially the state of our hospitals.
God forbid I get ill. Im afraid if I have to go to hospital I'll never come out.
You end up worse than when you went in

i agree steve, if the US, who are the biggest polluters and will not conform then whats the point........i also feel something needs to be done about the chopping down of rain forests

without trees we dont breath

[Dawn]

without trees we dont breath

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Mike's gone all green. :thumbs:

[PaulaK]

Apparently this is going to be added even if you've already booked. If you're in any class except economy, you're going to pay double. :rolleyes:

They're talking about collecting the tax at check-in from Feb 1st. They are not allowed to take cash so can you imagine the delays running a few hundred credit cards through the system? Another idiotic idea from Gordon Clown.

[ukwdwnut]

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Mike's gone all green. :thumbs:

ive felt like that for years dawn :D

and all for the sake of grazing land isnt it for the fast food industry :hissy: :grrr:

[ukwdwnut]

Apparently this is going to be added even if you've already booked. If you're in any class except economy, you're going to pay double. :rolleyes:

They're talking about collecting the tax at check-in from Feb 1st. They are not allowed to take cash so can you imagine the delays running a few hundred credit cards through the system? Another idiotic idea from Gordon Clown.

lets just hope this clown government never get in again

[Keith]

lets just hope this clown government never get in again

Got to get them out first though :(

[ukwdwnut]

Got to get them out first though :(

isnt that the truth, they are making this country the laughing stock of the world, ermmmmmmm have they actually got an immigration policy, i think not

sorry getting away from the topic of the thread :lol:

[Dawn]

ive felt like that for years dawn :D

and all for the sake of grazing land isnt it for the fast food industry :hissy: :grrr:

Just don't get me started on the fast food industry. I turn green and my clothes shred.

It's my big issue above all issues. :hissy: :hissy: :hissy:

[ukwdwnut]

Just don't get me started on the fast food industry. I turn green and my clothes shred.

It's my big issue above all issues. :hissy: :hissy: :hissy:

better not mention it to you in public then :lol:

[PaulaK]

Prepare for chaos at check-in! (http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10295-2500537,00.html)

[JuniorMickey]

Can't they allow pre-payment of it?

[PaulaK]

I suspect no-one will offer to pay it upfront just in case there's the slightest chance they get away with not paying it at check-in :lol:

[Redkop]

how dare they tax you on somethign you have already paid for, and you know there will be an armed raid at one of the big airports when gangsters know there moving the money :rolleyes:

[JuniorMickey]

I'd pre-pay it just not to deal with the chaos at the airport

[Andy B]

how dare they tax you on somethign you have already paid for, and you know there will be an armed raid at one of the big airports when gangsters know there moving the money :rolleyes:

Red you really havn't got the hang of this tax thing. They will tax you as many times as they can.

If you pay income tax you may earn £100 of which you pay 22%

£78 left ,you save this and pay tax on the interest.

When you die your house is worth £285,000 so your savings are subject to inheritance tax at 40% your £78 becomes £46.80

Your children decide to buy a dvd plaver with their inheritance and that is taxed at 17.5% vat so the usable amount is £38.61!

Dont worry about £20 flight tax they are taking the rest before you realise it.

[Keith]

I'm sure they'll come up with pre-payment webpages but argh :( what a mess

[Redkop]

its alright Andy, i have been married twice, i dont have any money :lol:

[uscwest]

The only things certain in life are Death and Taxes.

[Andy B]

Red, seems like yours will be the only club in Liverpool soon.

[ukwdwnut]

Red, seems like yours will be the only club in Liverpool soon.

do they play football then :lol:

[Andy B]

do they play football then :lol:

Social club.

[Mermaid]

I checked flights for our friend who will be travelling with us, their fare has gone up by £76.00 cos of the tax increase.

[Andy B]

I checked flights for our friend who will be travelling with us, their fare has gone up by £76.00 cos of the tax increase.

Interesting the tax increase was only by £20 per flight for long haul unless you were business class or first, wasn't 't?

[Mermaid]

Interesting the tax increase was only by £20 per flight for long haul unless you were business class or first, wasn't 't?

Sorry Imean't to say that this was for a family of four.

[Andy B]

That makes more sense but I still can't make it add up!:lol:

[stwi]

So are they classing PE as Econony or as non Economy?

[AlecK]

So are they classing PE as Econony or as non Economy?

PE is classed as non economy and pays the higher rate :(

[Lindsey]

I am a bit late to this post, but have read most of the comments. I have to agree with the 'greenies' but adding £320 to a familily holiday is very steep. This will be only the second time in 10 years we have been abroad and fair enough they have both been to Orlando but we work and save hard to have this opportunity. We don't drive gas guzzlers, we do everything we can to keep are carbon footprint really small and the one time (and rare occasion) that we fly we are penalised.:wacko:

[hayleyneeyore]

Sorry, just to get this clear - is this tax £20pp total, or £20 each way pp??

It just seems like yet another cost :rolleyes:

[Wendy L]

Sorry, just to get this clear - is this tax £20pp total, or £20 each way pp??

It just seems like yet another cost



It's just one way :rolleyes: it's a charge that our delightful Government are imposing.

What makes me laugh is how they can charge 2 different prices between economy and PE/UC :lol: at the end of the day people travelling in PE/UC are on the same flight so they aren't causing any more so called pollution are they :shrug:

I can't remember where I read it, but BA are covering the extra cost for all passengers that have booked flights before the announcement was made, :fingers: Virgin will do the same thing.

[Andy B]

I can't remember where I read it, but BA are covering the extra cost for all passengers that have booked flights before the 1st February, :fingers: Virgin will do the same thing.

I have received an invoice from my TAs for the additional tax on our Virgin flights in August.

[Wendy L]

I have received an invoice from my TAs for the additional tax on our Virgin flights in August.


I'm only passing on what I read on teletext a few days ago it said that BA was covering the cost themselves and package holidays are covered under some scheme :shrug:

Just found this on the BBC site:

BMI and Virgin Atlantic have yet to decide.

Those unsure whether they are liable are advised to contact their airline before travelling.

What about package holidays?

The vast majority of holidaymakers on a package deal will not be affected, says Abta, which represents travel agencies and tour operators.

This is because when an agency makes any surcharge it is obliged to absorb up to 2%.

So if you booked before the announcment then I would seriously be phoning my TA and asking them why they wanted more money :shrug:

The full story is here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6258327.stm)

[Andy B]

I'm only passing on what I read on teletext a few days ago it said that BA was covering the cost themselves and package holidays are covered under some scheme :shrug:

Not disagreeing just passing on what my experience is. I have read elsewhere that virgin were still to confirm for flight only bookings.

[Wendy L]

Not disagreeing just passing on what my experience is. I have read elsewhere that virgin were still to confirm for flight only bookings.

See my edited post if you booked a package before the announcement you should not have been charged.

[Andy B]

Have not booked a package have booked flights through a TA!

[hayleyneeyore]

I have booked a package hol with Virgin, so cross fingers we will be exempt!

[Debbie2]

I've reviewed my VH invoice on-line and nothing has been added :fingers:

[stwi]

How can they charge more for PE, it is the same service, just a bit more room.
I'm on a VH package though a TA so hopefully we don't get stung, because for 3 of us that will seriously eat into our spending budget.

[tweenie123]

I received an invoice on Saturday for our flight with the Emirates - we've had to pay an extra £60!