Live data from Hacker News

EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

argusmedia.com

141–150 of 265 posts

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#141
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who talks about jets or crews? This doesn't affect billionaires, but private and recreational use of mostly small propeller planes. Flying is expensive, but it isn't a privilege of "rich jerks". You want to make it a privilege for the elite, then go ahead and tax it to death.

Thank You. This makes a lot more sense. But I assume owner of recreational planes could be exempt and Private Jet, mostly for billionaires and business could still be taxed? Or am I missing something?

I tried to find numbers. This seems to give some context [1]: Look at page 8 and 9 and compare flight hours vs fuel consumption of single engine planes vs turbo-jet.

So there's a gray area that can be addressed in the future. Same goes for "should business build consumer electronics in Asia and fly it in" or "build it locally". But that wont change overnight either.

Nonetheless the regulation is a start, and as with any regulation I don't expect it to be perfect on day one or in cynical, bad faith.

[1]: https://download.aopa.org/hr/Report_on_General_Aviation_Tren...

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#142
post #36

Just goes to show fighting climate change is nothing but a power grab that makes life more miserable for regular people and making them more dependent on the rich and government.

I downvoted you. Fighting climate change is very important, and not just a power grab. People need to rise up and protest against things like these, so that power grab wouldn't happen. Just to clarify, perhaps my point is not obvious. We want to have carbon taxes because they address the problem of economic externality in combusting fossil fuels. Different example of a similar tax, that aims to solve a similar proble…

Bullshit.

Before stealing more from my money by making me pay even more taxes, go call out those criminals who go on private jets to a conference so they can tell me and you to not use plastic straws or eat less meat, or to abuse a little kid and use her to "stare down trump" so they can score political points, like we're in a freaking 3rd grade puppetry show, the earth and climate we'd be okay. Go research who's paying for these embedded ad campaigns in news reports about how "it's cool and healthy to eat bugs" and how it's mostly my fault the damned cows are farting. Go demand removal of those benefits to people with electric cars because manufacturing those batteries is as bad, if not more dangerous considering what happens when they explode (lookup exploded tesla cars). Go ask what happened to the ice sheets? Around 2010s it was all what media talked about, now no one even mentions it anymore. I guess they didn't melt. Go ask about why it was called global cooling, then changed to warming, then changed to climate change. This is ALL political. There's nothing scientific about this, alas some thug-researchers being paid by the same corporations who are the ones actually hurting the environment

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private jets are completely irrelevant to global warming because there are not enough of them. They probably are irrelevant, so why exempt them? > actually curbing global warming will require huge changes in the lifestyle of the global middle class. Not just the super-rich. I'm of the impression that "middle class lifestyle" itself isn't a big contributor to global warming but rather the manufacture and supply chai…

> They probably are irrelevant, so why exempt them? Because not exempting them may make it harder to pass the bill?

Honestly how much would this tax even affect the super rich? If you're rich enough to afford a private jet are you really scrutinizing your fuel bill?

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#145
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a carbon-per-person metric, private jets are literally the worst. Were the worst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism

Wait but rockets don’t use fossil fuels, do they?

Oh, but they do. New Shepard uses liquid hydrogen, which is not a fossil fuel per se, but in practice hydrogen is currently made from fossil fuels. SpaceShipTwo uses HTPB which is a hydrocarbon oligomer, basically synthetic rubber, definitely a fossil fuel. Falcon 9 first stage engines use RP-1, a fancy type of jet fuel. The Starship first stage uses methane, a fossil fuel (although it could be made renewably as well). The Atlas V core stage uses RP-1 and the boosters HTPB. The Delta IV and Ariane 5 core stages use liquid hydrogen.

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me dumping a bunch of tyres into a nearby river would be absolutely negligible compared to global pollution, yes it's still not allowed. A single private jet flight is incredibly polluting yet we allow it to be exempt from pollution tax because......on a grand scale it's nothing? Hmmmmmmm.

All of your points are valid. I guess I struggle with the hypocrisy around that fact that if we really want to curb CO2, there is a bigger fish to fry. For example, millions of people travel for pleasure on airplanes. From one point to the otherside of the globe. No one gives a damn about that, but hey! Look, rich people on fancy airplanes. Even just today, GitHub copilot Twitter thread was full of “Rich people (Micr…

People like when things are fair. To get those big wins you’re gonna have to either make things look fair or use force (i.e. guns). You won’t be able to change human society into a kind of minmaxing superintelligence.

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#147

> Private jets will enjoy an exemption through classification of "business aviation" as the use of aircraft by firms for carriage of passengers or goods as an "aid to the conduct of their business", if generally considered not for public hire. > A further exemption is given for "pleasure" flights whereby an aircraft is used for "personal or recreational" purposes not associated with a business or professional use. Su…

I don't understand the business aviation exemption at all. Why does it matter that the flight is being conducted to "aid to the conduct of their business"? And how is that different from other passenger flights? What about ICE, do companies also not have to pay the Ökosteuer (green tax) on gas in Germany?

Unlike what the mass outrage here makes you believe, this is a reasonable exception. Because non-commercial flights (business and hobby) already pay local taxes like VAT and excise on the fuel.

The thing is that fuel commercial aviation is exempt from tax due to historic regulations. The EU is proposing to change that by taxing jet fuel for those users. So it makes total sense that they exclude those that already pay tax on their fuel from this new tax.

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#148
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual reason for the exemption is that they cannot impose the tax on non-EU operators, giving the non-EU operators a competitive advantage.

They can’t impose a tax on jets that use their airspace?

AFAIK that would require changes to the customs area, which might have consequences for other aspects like transiting goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_control#Customs_area

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand people who think that, at hundreds or thousands of municipal and state levels, political leaders were secretly in meetings with robes nodding excitedly over the opportunity to oppress the masses. Or that an unknown, highly contagious respiratory disease causing hospitals to overflow with no vaccine available didn't warrant some kind of mandates against public interactions. It boggles my mind what k…

There was no hospital overflow. I live in Ukraine and even with a totally rudimentary health system and routinely ignored lockdowns, the health system functioned like any other flu outbreak. The temporary hospitals setup in the USA and UK were never used. If anything I am quite sure that the few lockdowns we did have worsened the spread of COVID, or at least concentrated it over a shorter timeframe, since people were…

Well, you're factually wrong that hospitals weren't at the breaking point - several in the United States were, as well as healthcare systems in Italy. The relative lack of use out of notable expansion sites was due, IMO, to mis-steps in the bureaucracy and prep, not in the lack of help that additional beds could provide.

Just flipping through your source of "50 months of quarantine", and without (yet) reading the entire article, it is citing an extrapolated number from a hypothetical, which you cite as a statement of fact. Covid has been around for 18 months. You are being misleading, or English may not be your first language.

In any case, I'm not saying certain measures or lockdowns were overkill. I believe governments and experts, in a transparent fashion, should be discussing what went wrong and right at all levels, and how we can do better, quicker, safer the next time a pandemic hits.

I strongly reject the notion that this was a massive conspiracy to test the reach of government restrictions.

Re: EU draft exempts private jets, cargo from jet fuel tax

#150
post #99
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only ones allowed to emit net positive CO2 where those rich enough to afford private planes global warming wouldn't be an issue because there are not enough of them. It is still a evil corrupt practice to except the rich like this though. The same laws need to apply to everyone, which means my time on an airplane counts for as much as anyone else even though I can only afford to fly at all because I buy one se…

And it's not even about forbidding them to so it. It's just about paying a little bit of taxes. Is the fuel taxes such a big part of the cost of flying a private jet? Is it just that those people hate paying taxes on principle (and manage to lobby for it)?

In Europe, people flying private are overlapping with those sitting in the parliaments.
Post reply on HN