> 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.
Surely they can afford it more than everyone else flying?
What about ICE, do companies also not have to pay the Ökosteuer (green tax) on gas in Germany?
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.
How do the numbers compare?
The proposal is for a minimum tax on jet fuel for commercial flights to still start at zero and then increase the minimum tax every year. So I'm expecting it to be below VAT + excise.
Were the worst.
For instance, most hydrogen production currently comes from heating up methane and steam for a CH4 + 2x H20 -> 4x H2 + CO2 reaction. So current hydrogen is just gas with extra steps.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/35155/what-rocket-...
Still doable with renewables though. Assume 11639 MWh of fuel energy and 60% efficiency converting electricity to fuel. About 19,400 MWh total. That's 8 days of output from a 300 MW wind farm operating at 1/3 capacity factor.
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 seat on a commercial plane once in a while. Either everyone can't fly, everyone can, or at least the same rules apply.
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)?
Sure, at the end of the day their paycheck is money that came from their sponsors, but I'm pretty sure they mostly pay for the flights themselves. Many drivers live in Monaco, so they've even shared a chartered private jet going to some races and back.
Or I've even seen a driver take his wife and kids to vacation from Switzerland to Finland, on a private plane, with no sponsors being tagged in the Instagram story (but well, let me guess, you're going to tell me I'm being advertised to in other ways).
Though sports figures are more likely to take private planes in general. [When] They have the high income to support it, they also have a need to get between many different cities fairly quick, and not all those cities have good commercial connections.
Thus racers are rich enough to support private planes - via their sponsors. Most people don't have that kind of income.
Fuel price is probably a rounding error in comparison (they get a few miles per gallon). Edit - some quick Googling suggests that jet fuel costs $1.96/gallon in the US at the end of last week.
Jets aren't cars, you can't just change the oil every 3 months and have it run for years.
So, not a rounding error, but it's still only 20% of the cost. The fuel estimate I had in my comment was for a smaller jet though (7 or 8 passenger).
Private and recreational flying is explicitly exempted from the tax too. So I don't think it affects them.
That was my point. Most of the comments hammer down on "oh, the corrupt elite wants to cheaply fly to Davos", ignoring that flying - while a very expensive hobby - is an aspirational and achievable endeavor for many people including an attached industry and jobs.
The outrage is misdirected. We are talking about negligible increase in cost here for general aviation.
Or am I missing something?
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...
Just keep the magnitude in context, I think it is still an issue but our focus needs to be appropriately allocated.
Should we also care that rich people take up more room in the airplane than the rest? Business class should be abolished?
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 (Microsoft apparently) get to ignore licenses but us poor plebs have to abide by them”
Christ. I feel like I’m witnessing a mob without reason, logic and rational.
Maybe I’m looking into this too much, but to me it’s unavoidable observation.
Especially when that wealth was achieved on the back of the labor, the consumption, and (increasingly) the attention spans of the mob.
Erm, that is exactly the point of the "mob".
The common people do have to pay the tax, while flying crowded and therefore somewhat efficient - and the rich people with their own fuel wasting private jets should pay no tax at all AND have the privilege of luxery? Where is the reason for this?
"Christ. I feel like I’m witnessing a mob without reason, logic and rational. "
So maybe I am missing something, but the mob reaction seems to be very much based on logic.
So what I was missing is, that apparently commerzial Airliners do benefit from tax free fuel - but private jets do not. They have to pay taxes and a lot more than this tax is going to be initially.
So it seems the whole thing is a weird backward way to take back a bit the tax excemption on tax free airliner fuel?
I disagree, people are very very eager to start traveling again. I know that a lot of people around me are literally going to bolt off the second they are allowed to, preferably to the farthest away destination possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that in any case (especially considering how good the vaccines are)
Except for climate change ...
But I also really would like to travel again, far away, so what to do.
They’re a convenient distraction from the problem that actually curbing global warming will require huge changes in the lifestyle of the global middle class. Not just the super-rich.
Except it won't.
It will cause some large industries to cease to exist though.
Hence, lots of lower-to-mid timeframe unemployment.
But the Democratic constituency is isolated now geographically and across occupations so that they don't get any votes from something like that, and the Republicans will be happy to allow the pain to happen while preventing any support and milking the resentment.
So yeah, that's probably what will happen because of our dysfunctional government, but by no means is that an economic certainty.
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 chains. If we electrify industry and transport, the bulk of the problem goes away (as I understand it) and the effects on the middle class are pretty transparent apart from choices to fund the transition to clean energy (e.g., to what extent does the middle class pay for the transition rather than the super rich). In other words, the average middle class lifestyle isn't significantly impacted by whether their goods are manufactured, refined, transported, etc with clean energy or dirty energy.
I get the distinct impression that the "middle class lifestyles will change dramatically" is frequently a euphemism for "we must go full-vegan" by people who are anti-meat. But meat production in the US accounts for only 8% of (co2-equivalent) emissions and those emissions are largely methane and nitrous oxide which dissipate quickly relative to co2 (12 years for methane vs 300-1000 years for co2).
Because not exempting them may make it harder to pass the bill?
Manufacture and supply chains (and services for that matter) that provide to the middle class. At least that's my interpretation of the parent's point.
The total installed renewable electricity capacity was greater than the totla installed fossil capacity for the first time in 2020. It was not replacing old fossil capacity, it was just added to the mix. And capacity != production, so i guess it's even worse than that.
Every amount of pollution counts, otherwise we could also claim that a single individual makes 0 difference.
If we consider such number small enough to be rounded to zero we are implicitly allowing homicide.
It portends a future where only the lower classes shoulder the burden of reductions in quality of life to manage climate change.
Which is, of course, what's going to happen.
And the same people probably have several yachts that burn even more fuel per hour.
Depends what you consider a "jet". There are a lot of aicraft in GA aviation that consume fuel at the same amount/km as a car, while not contributing to carbon emissions by sitting in traffic. Many of them also burn regular gasoline as fuel.
Presumably they already signed aviation treaties that do not allow for this.
> members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), including the United Kingdom, are prevented from taxing international aviation fuel, or any proxies for fuel, under the Chicago Convention.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00...
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-pas...