Tories 'green' tax plans target aircraft and cars

[Barrett808]

Tories 'green' tax plans target aircraft and cars
By Anthony Browne, Chief Political Correspondent

TAXES on motoring, flying and other polluting activities would rise under a Conservative government, according to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.

He said that the Tories would raise more money from green taxes and less from taxes on employment, investment and savings. The policy is aimed at giving the Conservative Party a green image, but risks alienating both motorists and right-wingers, who want more emphasis on tax cuts.

He made one of his clearest statements yet on tax on a trip to Japan, where he is studying ways of reducing pollution, including the use of super-fast trains to curb demand for internal flights. Today he will take a ride on a magnetic train capable of travelling at 360mph, which he said could virtually eliminate domestic flights if brought to Britain.

Mr Osborne and David Cameron, the Conservative leader, are touring Asia as part of their strategy to portray the party as a government in waiting, being taken seriously by foreign leaders and with a coherent range of policies. Mr Cameron will next week visit India, where he will meet business and political leaders.

Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Osborne said: “I believe we in Britain should move some of the burden of taxation away from income and capital and towards taxes on environmentally-damaging behaviour. Instead of a tax system that penalises hard work and enterprise, I want to move towards more effective and fair taxes on pollution. I want the proportion of tax revenue raised by green taxes to rise.”

(more)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2337901,00.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Actually not a bad idea

People fly from Manchester to London or from Aberdeen to Glasgow, which means that it takes more time to get to the airport on either end than is spent in the air. Any time saved over train travel is probably eaten up with the typical airport hassles.

[dipsydoodle]

2. What you said

is an extremely accurate assessment of the situation. In the instances you quoted it probably twice as much time spent going to and fro from the airports as being in actual flight. Oddly enough same almost applies even if going to from London to Paris.

[w4rma]

3. "burden of taxation away from income and capital" is not a bad idea?

This is just another attempt at a new type of flat tax. Gasoline is already taxed in the UK very well.

[Massacure]

4. And gasoline is the scourge of humanity.

Gasoline wouldn't be used so much if the external costs of its use were internalized.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. True, gasoline is heavily taxed and costs 99p per liter, but

the rise of the cut-price airlines has provided the illusion of speed and convenience for whizzing around this small country. The train from London to York (almost Scotland) takes 2.5 hours, downtown to downtown, and has a first-class section. Why fly? The only reason is that it's bare-bones cheap with bare-bones service--but environmentally destructive.

If I were in charge, I'd tax domestic air travel heavily and use it to re-nationalize and improve the rail system. It's way better than Amtrak even in its deteriorated state, but it's pathetic compared to Japan.

[sweetheart]

6. labour asswipes have left the field open for the tories

The problem with all this green happy talk is that its coming from the british neocons who are, like
the bush neocons, just liars who chamelieon in to whatever masque to get elected and then go to
war ruthlessly to screw the poor.

I'm apalled that the libdems and labour have so completely lost the plot whilst trying to
deal with the stupid dorko who won't retire... but i've a theory on blair...

he works for the CIA and he's been told to sit in number 10 until a year from now to make sure
that labour loses the next election.

[intaglio]

7. He'll have problems taxing aircraft fuel in this way

There are lots of international agreements, strongly supported by the aircraft industry, that regulate the lack of taxation on aircraft fuels.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. But there is a European push for this too

MEPs voted by 439 to 74 to adopt proposals drafted by Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MEP for southeast England. There were 102 abstentions.
...
The MEPs said that the scheme should cover all flights arriving at or departing from EU airports rather than just intra-EU flights, as had been proposed by BA. But the scheme is likely to be limited to flights within Europe in the early years to avoid legal challenges from the United States and other countries. MEPs also accepted the proposal for a separate environmental tax to cover the impact of nitrogen oxides and condensation trails emitted by aircraft.

When emitted at altitude, these emissions trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The parliament accepted that aviation’s total contribution to global warming was two to four times greater than the impact of CO2 alone, and that airlines should be forced to pay for this.
...
The parliament’s vote will strongly influence legislation being drafted by the European Commission and due to be debated later this year. The emissions trading scheme is due to be introduced in 2008 but commission officials admit it could be delayed until 2010.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2256590,00.html

The European Parliament can't implement it on its own, but support from political parties in each country will be needed for it. While it can't be used to tax inter-continental flights without international agreement, it could tax the flights for which the train is a realistic alternative, inside Europe.

[ForPeace]

9. Taxes on motoring are already very high

It's a good idea to discourage unnecessary motoring, but this really hurts people in rural communities who don't have public transport. They need to make some sort of exemption for those who have no alternative but to drive.

[happyslug]

10. The problem is the exemptions becomes a Subside for Sprawl

In the period after WWII and before the 1964 Supreme Court Decision of One man one vote, most States had more representatives from Rural Areas than from Urban Areas. Being anti-City, these rural state Representatives made rules like the one in Pennsylvania where the state highways ended at the border of the City (The Cities had the duty to pave the road in the Cities). Now In Pennsylvania this rule was abolished long before WWII, but rural representatives still gave more money to rural areas than urban areas. One of the side affects of this is that Rural areas near Urban areas were often given even more money do to lobbying by developers. Thus the Rural representatives, while protecting Rural areas, also inadvertently encouraged Sprawl. By the time of the 1964 Decision forcing states to made each of their representative Districts the same number of Voters, Suburbia was about 1/3 of the Country and expanding. Many of the rules adopted BEFORE 1964 stayed on the books (and many are still on the books) but instead of helping Rural areas basically encourage sprawl at the expense of the inner cities.

I fear the same problem if you provide subsidized to Rural Americans, these subsidize will also go to those people living in the latest ex-urban sprawl. Thus the affect would be to let such suburban homeowners use lower price gasoline while the inner city has to pay much higher gasoline rates.

The better policy would be NO subsidies, instead use some of the money to improve the roads and sub-standard bridges in Rural America. To provide some sort of transit system in every county west of the Rockies (The Desert counties of the Southwest has to be treated as it is, a low density, even by rural standards, population areas the best solution there may be just make sure the roads are paved and the Bridges are safe). What do I mean by Transit? While maybe a Rail stop in most counties, maybe some sort of bus system. Anyway, most Rural people will opt for more fuel efficient vehicles just like Urban people, thus subside would discourage this switch.

While I believe the Needs of the Rural Areas have to be addressed do to the high price of gasoline, the best way would be to address the problems caused by the high prices of Gasoline NOT to reduce taxes in rural area to to the negative effect such low prices will have on Sprawl AND reducing overall oil use.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Exactly, rural people need encouragement to transition away from

petroleum for driving, not unwitting subsidies to ex-urbanites who want to have a two-acre lot to grow grass on.

You could have hourly buses (or maybe just vans) from the rural communities to the nearest large town, with the understanding that farm dwellers could get picked up if they stood by the road and flagged down the van. You could encourage a return to horse-drawn vehicles for short trips. (The Amish are not contributing to America's dependence on foreign oil.)

It may seem like a kindness to subsidize the driving habits of rural people, but in the end, the inevitable transition to non-petroleum transportation will only be harder when oil becomes unaffordable or unavailable.

[happyslug]

12. Except for areas out west, a better solution may just be improve roads

A lot of rural roads are death traps, they do NOT get the reputation do to the low number of people who travel on them. One aspect that would help a lot of rural areas would be a plan to replaces old and obsolete bridges on rural roads. Many rural communities go miles out of they way do to bridge closings or weight restrictions on bridges that need to be replaced. Adding site distances and break down lanes would help many of these roads (and would permit biking on these roads, given the tendency for people in rural areas to travel at high rates of speed on basically paved over wagon trails).

I've always advocated that if gasoline taxes are raised to reduce gasoline consumption, at about 20 cents out of every Dollar collected should be reserved for rural area road improvements. In addition Rural areas should be eligible for the other 90 Cents collected out of each dollar for the same programs the money is being spent on.

In my ideal plan, 20 cents out of each Dollar collected would go to building, but not running, mass transit systems, basically providing revenues to build Light Rail systems (Modernized Streetcar systems). Another 20 cents would be to build a true Railway system in this country, concentrating on routes between cities run by small one to two car trains and then working upward as more and more people opt for such rides. Another 20 Cents out of each dollar would go to building improvements of known traffic bottlenecks, areas where automobile traffic tends to come to a stop do to to much traffic for the highway (Mostly will be to replace red lights with cloverleafs so traffic flows through these bottlenecks instead of inching forward at each change of the light). I would then spend 20 cents out of every dollar collected for bike ways so that people are encouraged to bike to work, these can be retrofitted easier than even Light Rail Lines, with many being just part of a re-design of older four lane highways, with no turning lane nor breakdown lanes, to modern two way highways with a turning lane in the middle of the road and two bike lanes on both sides (These older four lane roads are more common in the older cities of the US East Coast and Mid-west then in the boom cities of the West and South, in the West and South and the newer suburbs of the East Coast and Mid-West true bike ways would be preferred). These added together with the 20 cents for Rural Roads add up to the Dollar collected.

While the above is ideal (and would even lead to a drop in Gasoline prices as more and more people opt for alternatives means of getting around do to not only the high price caused by the Tax, but the growing number of alternatives produced form the revenues collected), I just do not see Congress passing such a law. People who would not benefit at the time of passage (And that is most people for only with the money collected can you plan any of the above) will fight the plan tooth and nail, while those that will benefit, while supportive will accept defeat "This year" since they know it will pass sooner or later. This is true of most changes in the law, the people most hurt fight the change, while those that would benefit the most give it only lukewarm support until a criss hits and some sort of change MUST be made. Thus most change only occur during times of criss when Congress has to do something. This is what happened during FDR's 100 days, the passage of laws that had been advocated since the 1890s. After Watergate you saw the Start of Federal Aid to Education (Which had been proposed since 1944, but blocked when the blacks in Congress opposed any of the money going to segregated schools, Congress finally pass a law giving Federal Support with no aid to segregated Schools only in 1974 and that act did more than anything else to end segregation). SSI was passed in 1974 to help those people who had poor or little work history but can not work, as did the changes in the Law regarding Public Housing switching it from a program to help industry house they workers to housing people of very little income (Prior to 1974 the truly poor could NOT get into Public Housing for most did not have a steady source of Income to pay the rent and Public Housing Agencies demanded a good record of paying rent and a steady income to get into Public Housing before the changes made in 1974 which required Public Housing Agencies to rent to low income people even of there only source of Income was welfare). The passage of the Patriot Act right after 911 (criss can work both good and bad). Even the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act can be seen as deriving form the Criss of the Civil Rights Movement. The Fall of Vietnam brought forth the Wars Powers Act.

Thus I do not see Congress passing a Gasoline Tax until we have a Criss like the Oil Embargo of 1973 and that last more than the three months of the Embargo in 1973.