[Anonymous]

[TerryMcManus24]

George has spoken…..all over bar the shouting…..

Amsterdam .(.London /Heathrows 3rd Runway.)..will be celebrating

Chancellor George Osborne indicated no change in government policy on APD-Air Passenger Duty today in a Budget speech which made no mention of the tax.

Although he announced a freeze in petrol duty and a cut in the duty on beer, but made no reference to APD.(some comfort)

The Treasury previously said the Tax would rise annually by the rate of inflation and had released documents to show projected revenue rising year by year to 2017-18

The forecast is for a rise of 3.6% year on year to £2.9 billion in 2013-14 and to £3.8 billion in another four years time.

[Bucksnet]

APD needs to be totally scrapped. If there was no APD the government would actually get more revenue due to increased economic activity, and the Dutch government proved this when they scrapped their equivalent.

[HarryMonk]

Call me cynical but if it was scrapped I can’t see fares being reduced by the corresponding amount, instead it will just become additional profit margin for the airlines, perhaps disguised in the form of increased “fuel surcharge” or “international charge” and still refered to as a tax.

[Bucksnet]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9943214/Budget-2013-air-tax-rise-confirmed.html

[canucklad]

Cheers to you St. Gideon………..

I now have no excuse for downing 300 pints of Dunbar’s finest “Best” every week…

That way, I can claim my free pint with my penny saved!!

However regardless of how paralytic and scatter cash I get after drinking my bonus 300th pint….I will still do everything I can to avoid paying your odious, nonsense, economy damaging APD tax…… …. So sorry BA-VS and Blighty airports I’m off to….

Tuliptown, Riverdancecity, Frogville, or indeed anywhere else were passengers don’t get fleeced will benefit from my hard earned cash before you get a hold of it!

But once again….thanks for saving the pub industry ,so I can take advantage of my penny!

[Stringfellow]

I’m always surprised with actions like 1p off a pint. It obviously will not make one bit of difference to a drinker but the revenue lost must be substantial – does not seem to make much sense beyond publicity.

[Cedric_Statherby]

Stringfellow

Got it in one! All of politics these days revolves around publicity – as you say, 1p off a pint is worth nothing at all in cash terms but makes the Chancellor look like a friend of the people.

[Shearer]

1p off pint is also combined with axing the beer duty escalator or whatever you want to call it. So probably a bigger deal that it sounds.

I still insist airlines do themselves no favours with a government obsessed with ‘hard working families’ – whatever they are. Press releases about how much APD adds to a family of four’s Caribbean holiday left me cold and I am sure many others.

With APD hidden in a plethora of other fees and fuel surcharges, its impact on the cost of the ticket is lost. Sure, for my Virgin flights in November I am paying £134 in tax, but I also pay a £319 fuel surcharge. And I find that far more annoying.

[HarryMonk]

NIRscot

i couldn’t agree more, especially when the unitiated, travel agents and even airlines often refer to the £319, or whatever number the airline plucks out of thin air, as a “Tax” of which it of course is not such thing.

[RedFlyer]

HarryMonk – I think you are being cynical here and thinking exactly along the lines our dear Chancellor would like you to.

If APD was scrapped you would automatically receive the equivalent discount off the total price you pay for your flights. The point is this ‘duty’ has nothing to do with the costs of running the business and being able to make a profit (which seems to be a dirty word in the airline business).

Yes I think the airlines do themselves no favours in the argument by continuing to maintain fuel surcharges but that is at least part of the operational costs (and goes nowhere near covering the cost of fuel I would add) and the levels that are charged along with fares are relevant based on the market environment, and that’s pretty competitive.

Make no mistake APD is an evil and immoral tax grab (When you think every visitor to these shores is hit with a duty to go towards paying our deficit) and I’m surprised visitor arrivals haven’t suffered more as a result.

The really annoying part of this is the Governments refusal to consider the impact by undertaking an independent review. As usual heads stuck in the proverbial sand (or perhaps somewhere more appropriate?)

[Binman62]

My views on this are well documented. Whilst carriers continue to apply fuel surcharges there should not be a single penny taken off APD.

Indeed as the thread yesterday showed, BA has applied huge price increases to fares ex the EU and so there is simply no correlation between the costs and level of travel in premium cabins.

APD is a fraction of carriers own Fuel charges and those in non premium seats are shielded by the artificial lowering of fare buckets in the main cabins.

AS for it being evil and immoral….Visitors to these shores can be seen daily in long queues at the well advertised and always well staffed VAT reclaim desks that grace all terminals at LHR.

They get back their VAT but as a UK taxpayer just try doing that in the USA or Canada! Australia andSingapore have similar schemes but place significant hoops in the way of recovering the money.

Time to close the VAT reclaim loop hole also

Once we have fair taxation and a few tax dodgers imprisoned then we can start to look at APD, till then in the words of \George….we are all this this together.

[HarryMonk]

Redflyer

I don’t like APD and understand exactly what it is just like most people in this forum and in an honest world I too would like to think if APD was eliminated or reduced the cost to the traveller would also be reduced by the same amount but I still think it is very unlikely. Maybe it would be refunded for existing bookings made for a future date after the tax but I doubt if we would see long term reductions by anything like as much.
As for visitors to the UK, many of their home nations implement similar taxes, although granted not to the same degree.

Fuel surcharges need to be transparent and should only be surcharge above a set baseline. In the modern day airlines can change their base fares minute by minute to reflect their costs if they wish, the days of having to print a brochure or price list six months or a year in advance and then being hit by massive changes in fuel & currency are gone.

[RedFlyer]

HarryMonk

Your arguments regarding fuel surcharges are logical and I agree with them (although fuel surcharges are transparent as they are detailed in the tax breakdown). The main reason airlines don’t want to include within the fare these days is because they don’t have to pay agency commissions on it.

As for other nations imposing similar taxes, this is were the UK public is under a misconception. I believe there may be one or two far flung nations that impose a duty but the overwhelming majority of nations with services into the UK do not impose any kind of ‘duty’ whatsoever. There are various taxes which apply but they ALL relate to a specific element of the journey such as immigration, security, airport charges etc. Perhaps this is a challenge for BT readers to advise of any countries that anyone knows of that do charge a ‘duty’ (I’ll hazard a bet it’s nowhere near £188 though).

In the meantime I’m off to join Canucklad to work towards my free pint as clearly the support for Gideon’s grab in this slowly self combusting country means there is no other alternative than to sit back and view the apocalypse from afar !!

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

Hi RedFlyer

You will find that agency commissions in almost all major markets and with major airlines are now 0%. Therefore airlines could easily take the fuel surcharge element back into the base fares.

Unfortunately I see the budget as rather pointless. Nothing of any real note in it. Getting rid of APD would have been a wonderful chance to encourage real growth and job creation and make the UK look like it is open for business. Personally I think the chancellor needs his head examining as when growth is basically zero I’d be biting my right arm off if someone came up with a cost neutral way of getting a quick 1%. Instead heads buried in sand come to mind and we aren’t getting anywhere. Deficit isn’t coming down and no growth. So all we will get is another year of economic malaise. If the only positive thing to say is that at least the other lot aren’t in, then we are in a sorry state of affairs. Boy I’d love to be the chancellor right now. But alas I would have to enter politics!

[Author]

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