“We will never impose unnecessary and heavy-handed measures on you, the British people. We will still meet our international commitments and hit Net Zero by 2050.”
Those were Rishi Sunak’s words to the UK on 20 September, as he unveiled five of these “measures” that the Tory party would be putting a swift stop to. It was unclear who had been proposing these initiatives in the first place – surely, as the majority ruling party, the Conservatives themselves would have had to put them forward in order to retract them? – but regardless, one in particular jumped out at me. And it wasn’t even the one about not having to sort our rubbish into seven different bins…
Among the five “heavy-handed measures” that the PM was magnanimously putting the kibosh on – each one bonkers in its own distinct way – was this gem: “New taxes to discourage flying”.
Thank goodness for that! We certainly wouldn’t want any more heavy-handed taxation on the already heavily taxed aviation industry!
Well, I say heavily taxed. It doesn’t pay any fuel tax, as such. Jet fuel, known as kerosene, is completely tax-free – unlike the fuel used by every other form of transport. In the UK, the headline rate on standard petrol and diesel for vehicles is 52.95 pence per litre. Diesel used for passenger rail travel in the UK is subject to fuel duty of 11.14p per litre, while taxes make up almost 40 per cent of the total electricity costs for train operators. There’s a reason that flight you saw from London to Edinburgh is half the price of the equivalent train journey: one form of transport is required to pay fuel tax, the other isn’t.
Oh, and there’s no VAT on plane tickets either, in case you were wondering – unless you happen to be travelling by private jet. “Zero rating applies to all scheduled flights irrespective of the carrying capacity of aircraft”, says HM Revenue & Customs. We may still have to pay that 20 per cent tax on the vast majority of goods and services in this country, but not when it comes to air travel.
There’s a reason that flight you saw from London to Edinburgh is half the price of the equivalent train journey
But fear not, there is still one tax flights are subject to in the UK: Air Passenger Duty, or APD. This was a tax first introduced in 1994, with one of the original stated aims being to offset the…
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