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France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

reuters.com

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Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#111

Post by simias »

tyingq wrote: post #47
Bayart wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying takes a pretty heavy toll on the environment, it should be discouraged as much as possible. If people want to travel, the continent's already covered with roads and rail.

Is 3 euros, round trip, really going to incent different behavior?

The reactions in this thread really show why I'll never want to become a politicians. Half of the reactions here are "that's a regressive tax that'll kill our freedom", the other half being "that's not nearly expensive enough".

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#112

Post by sgc »

duxup wrote: post #57
isolli wrote: post #5

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"

"The new French tax will be 1.5 euros for flights within France or the European Union, 3 euros for economy flights out of the EU, 9 euros for intra-EU business class and up to 18 euros for business class tickets out of the EU. Transit flights will not be taxed." 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.

Layover flight.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#113

Post by ggreer »

frenchman99 wrote: post #34
elohju wrote: post #21

Because in France ecofascism is becoming the #1 religion thanks to leftist propaganda. Government uses that to increase taxes.

Oxfam says that the 10% richest account for 50% of air pollution. People that have enough money to travel by plane should have enough money to not destroy our environment.

If the source you're citing is Oxfam's report on Extreme Carbon Inequality[1][2], which was widely reported as saying that the world's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions, that is incorrect. If you read the PDF, they're only looking at estimates of "lifestyle consumption emissions", not total emissions. From the PDF:

> Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and international transport are therefore excluded. The proportion of total consumption emissions attributed to the lifestyle consumption of individuals varies by country, but globally accounts for around 64% of the total.

> Oxfam’s estimates should only be considered indicative of the orders of magnitude, but also as conservative...

The report also says that women are hit harder by climate change than men and disparages "carbon baron billionaires". Petroleum companies aren't growing faster than the rest of the economy, so it's unclear what argument they're actually making.

Such blatant misrepresentation and pandering caused me to lose trust in Oxfam.

1. https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-ex...

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19995922

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#115

Post by pmontra »

simias wrote: post #83
cameronbrown wrote: post #10

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…

I took a plane from Lisbon to Paris for 35 euros last week. That feels incredibly cheap to me, especially compared to high-speed train. I routinely pay twice as much to get not even half as far by TGV. Making train more competitive by taxing planes more might not be a terrible idea. I say might because I can't pretend to even begin to understand all the implications of this tax but hopefully whoever came up with it d…

On distances like Lisbom to Paris trains can't compete on time, not only on price. There is no way a train can be made faster with the current technology (hyperloop: let's wait and see.) I think nobody goes from Lisbon to Paris and back by train to spend a weekend there.

Of course if flying costs more people will fly less.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#116

Post by [deleted] »

theDevill wrote: post #56

Why are Americans so obsessed with religion, devil and sins?! 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?

[deleted]

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#117

Post by samsonradu »

baud147258 wrote: post #91
keiferski wrote: post #48

I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours. For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

The train infrastructure is not perfect, the biggest issue being travels not going to/from Paris: the lines aren't as good and there aren't a lot of high-speed lines.

And they’re expensive compared to flying the equivalent route/distance.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#119

Post by usrusr »

duxup wrote: post #57
isolli wrote: post #5

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"

"The new French tax will be 1.5 euros for flights within France or the European Union, 3 euros for economy flights out of the EU, 9 euros for intra-EU business class and up to 18 euros for business class tickets out of the EU. Transit flights will not be taxed." 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.

> "Transit flights" Is that a connecting flight? Seems to be the only exception.

Makes sense, economically, in that there is quite fierce competition between CDG and other major European hub airports for filling spare intercontinental capacity and multi-hop connections are far more price sensitive than direct flights. If CDG would lose a majority of regional (but still international) feeder traffic to FRA or AMS, Paris would experience a noticeable drop in direct connections.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#120

Post by bryanlarsen »

flexie wrote: post #104
hrktb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the tax is to recover the external cost of flying. 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.

But close to nothing is being recovered. We would recover more or less the same if we introduced a tax on bad weather to be paid by those suffering from it. The money collected with this tax may or may not reduce air travel and will be spent on government employees, welfare distributions, healthcare, roads, military etc as all other taxes and only a fraction will be spent on improving the environment.

They could destroy the money collected from the tax and it would still improve the environment: the tax will discourage people from flying and encourage people to use alternatives, which helps the environment.
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