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I've flown through a French airport once - Paris Charles de Gaulle and since have gone out of my way to not fly through it again. It was a hot mess. They lost the luggage, it was hard to find gates, parts of it looked outdated, customer service sucked. A year after, the ceiling at its _new_ terminal collapsed killing several people ( https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de-gaulle-airport-terminal... ). Maybe it was just…
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I think they expect people to fly less; similar to many other “sin” taxes like those on alcohol or tobacco.
What's the alternative to flying?
I guess that's why the tax is on take-off, so everyone can afford landing!
Bad jokes aside France has a huge highspeed rail network.
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Do you have a working definition of fascism here or are you using it as something closer to "a bad politics thing"?
It means screwing off people and justifying with "we're saving the planet".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they expect people to fly less; similar to many other “sin” taxes like those on alcohol or tobacco.
What's the alternative to flying?
For all flights the alternative is just not to go. Instead of flying to the Caribbean for a holiday, go some place closer and take the train, instead of flying for a business meeting, just call in. If it's worth that much for you to fly, then paying a little tax on top should be fine. Flyers still aren't paying fully for the damage they do to the environment.
Taxes exist to capture money and finance the externalities that are ignored by corporations. If corporations were more responsible countries would not have to tax these issues.
In this case France is using the money to improve an already pretty good rail system. Compare this to the US and the California train line?
Isn't the title misleading? From the article: "The new French tax will be 1.5 euros for flights within France." Unless "out of France" simply means originating in France, regardless of whether the destination is in France or not. Either way, the original title is better, I would keep it: "France to tax flights from its airports"
I read that as most flights in or out of France being taxed.
"Transit flights" Is that a connecting flight? Seems to be the only exception.
As subsidies and taxes can be used to incentivize and disincentivize behavior, I’m happy about this. Flights have truly large ecologic costs, and flyers need to be aware of that, trying to minimize travel if not necessary. I’m particularly happy that it’s not a flat tax but based on ticket class.
I don't really understand what the purpose of this tax is. There's no alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline, so why go after flights? What do they expect them to do? If you're taxing petrol cars you'd expect electric cars to become more economically viable. Either way I disagree with carbon taxes. They're regressive, and ignore the fact that regular people are being badly hurt by them whereas th…
Ideally there are alternatives to flying, but it's not a requirement: as long as flying has an environmental price, recovering it through tax is a decent logic.
We can discuss the offered price, or how the tax could be structured, but I don't think the approach is unreasonable on its face.
They say it will "help support the environment", which could mean through funding of greener initiatives, R&D or level the playing field (although the tax is really low/symbolic, in my opinion). It makes sense to tax flights in order to subsidize rail for short-distance trips. I would have expected a higher tax on flights outside the EU, so that people change their habits (although then you need a carbon-tax sort of…