The craziness with which Western countries try to ignore international law keeps increasing. One good example is the aviation tax that will start with the beginning of next year. On itself there is nothing wrong with a tax on fuel for planes. On the contrary, not being taxed gives air transport an unfair advantage over other types of transport.
The problem is in the extra-territoriality. If there is a flight from Brussels to Tokyo the EU wants to tax the whole route and not just the part between Brussels and the Ukrainian border. If a country like Russia or China had done such a thing the EU would have fumed with anger but nowadays the EU leaders feel just as invulnerable as their American colleagues. Both the EU and the US leaders are incompetent to get their own affairs back on track. It looks like their extremist foreign policy is meant to give their voters the impression that they are still in control.
In the mean time we will likely see that people will get creative evading the tax. One example are ideas to give fights from Hong Kong to Germany a stop in Mumbay. It is 1800 km extra but that will be more than compensated because you have only to pay tax for the distance between Mumbay and Germany.
1 comment:
"On itself there is nothing wrong with a tax on fuel for planes"
That is a dubious assumption. In light of Europe's massive overtaxation, surely this is not needed at all.
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