lionel wrote:
Possibly only intra-EU CAT
Which would be sensible – the main reason for not taxing fuels in international transit, especially aviation, is that otherwise fuel will be bunkered from low-cost to high-cost locations, which increases fuel consumption and emissions and defeats the alleged reason of fuel taxes to reduce emissions.
With this approach, only those will get taxed who can’t “take their business elswehere”
But companies pay excise on fuel for trucks and buses regardless the business they do, unlike CAT which gets excise-free fuel.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
In most countries Jet A1 is already taxed for GA, only for commercial and training not.
There is also per seat tax for commercial aviation. It’s definitely taxed, but not with fuel.
LeSving wrote:
There is also per seat tax for commercial aviation. It’s definitely taxed, but not with fuel.
But CAT can simply add this to the ticket price so effectively the passenger pays the tax and not the company.
Surely the customer ultimately pays whether the tax is on fuel or seats. I suppose a seat tax is more predictable (i.e. fuel duty will rise and fall with fuel prices).
kwlf wrote:
Surely the customer ultimately pays whether the tax is on fuel or seats. I suppose a seat tax is more predictable (i.e. fuel duty will rise and fall with fuel prices).
No, fuel duty is a fixed amount per hl (hectolitre). VAT applies on it, so you pay tax on tax.
France had (for land vehicle fuel) at some point (for a rather short while) a system of variable fuel excise, supposed to smooth out the fuel price variability, but they scrapped it in favour of the usual fixed rate.
kwlf wrote:
Surely the customer ultimately pays whether the tax is on fuel or seats
Of course. However, on the news today. Cruise ships traveling along the coasts of Europe pollute 10x more than all the cars in Europe. This is SOx pollution.
If we do the math – a 737 NG takes 20800kg of fuel which equates to 26000 litres of fuel – for a full fuel range of 5500 km – for 180 passengers – but considering that nobody except for Norwegian air is flying like that lets be more accurate lets say AMS to Bordeaux would use 32000 litres of fuel(I looked up sector planners for a 737 900 online), so a return flight is 64000 litres of fuel.
64klitres is 21120 euros of tax (330 euros per hecta litre) which would equate to 117 euros in tax per passenger for a return flight from AMS to Bordeaux.
Hardly excessive but it would suit Air France, Lufthansa etc very well as they would not be paying tax on their long haul flights and it would be a serious crimp in the plans of Ryanair, Easyjet etc
Edited the previous post as I cross checked the fuel calculator against 3 other models and the original one was off by a significant factor
I think €117 would be a massive hit and would finish the short haul “casual holiday” business pretty well, except for business travel.
I think the breakeven ticket cost of a typical short haul trip in Europe is about €150, each way.
Luckily Ryanair are in [what will remain) the EU 
If you have to decide between a per-passenger tax and a per-hectoliter tax, the latter has the better steering effect. If you take an airline that has a high passenger loading factor, it produces less emissions per passenger on the same route than an airline with a half-empty plane, but would be paying more taxes under the current schemes.
Also, any effort to reduce fuel consumption (by e.g. flying with another cost index or more efficient flight profiles because you choose smaller, less congested airports) is not rewarded by a per-passenger tax.
And as always, the irrational focus on aviation by environmentalists will lead to double and triple taxation due to a combination of airlines’ participation in emissions trading, voluntary compensations, per-passenger taxes and fuel taxes. This will steer traffic towards other, already heavily subsidised means of transportation which may not be much better environmentally in the long run, but are socially more acceptable it seems.
