2.5 – Passenger Tax: Involvement of International Aviation in the Levying of Consumer Taxes

By Carlijn Jonkman

Recently the Dutch government has sent a bill to parliament, in which an air passenger tax and a packaging tax have been proposed. These new taxes will be incorporated in an existing law entailing several taxes on an environmental basis, that is, taxes on the supply of energy, the extracting of ground water, the supply of tap water and the dumping of waste. Jonkman in her essay puts emphasis on the difference between taxes and public charges and, furthermore, makes clear that such an intervention is also meant as a stimulus of desired behavior. Basically an air passenger tax compensates somewhat for the fact that in consumer prices of tickets environmental consequences are not taking into account sufficiently. The tax affects consumers fairly in the same way as other consumer taxes do: prices go up, choices have to be reconsidered.