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Why not tax private jets out of business?
- zardo 3y agoIf the goal is to end private jet flights, why would you just tax them instead of banning them outright?
- smileysteve 3y agoBecause banning them is more contrary than making them pay their "fair share". You have passing the law, exceptions from the wealthy and/or powerful, and then you have enforcement (for the wealthy and powerful). But the article perhaps doesn't go far enough; Tax private flights to pay their "fair share" of airport and ATC costs; and then guilt all of the businesses into also being "carbon offset" (like the major carriers)
- francisofascii 3y agoA few reasons...mainly because it is not the goal of everyone. Taxing is a compromise between not taxing at all and a full on ban. Taxing is less worrisome to most people because you are not losing the right to do something, you just have to pay more. Also, taxing can act to offset whatever negative impact the offending act has.
- stusmall 3y agoAs it mentions in the article, it allows people who have the wealth and love private jet travel enough to have the option to prioritize it and pay the extra taxes. The proposed tax is about a 9x jump. It's a lot but the excise tax on jet fuel isn't the only thing making private jet travel expensive. It'll still be well with in reach for many of the ultra rich. It's a flashy title for clicks that doesn't well represent the contents. But I don't know if as many people would click "Why not raise taxes on private jet travel so its cost to flier better represents its cost to society as whole?"
- francisofascii 3y agoFYI: This commentary is due to a US bill recently introduced that would increase fuel taxes for private jet travel from the current $0.22 to $1.95 per gallon.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoPrivate jet travel does not exist.
- gwbrooks 3y agoOr - hear me out - maybe just use taxes to fund government rather than pursuing political/social agendas.
- Retric 3y agoTaxing externalities increases economic efficiency which has major benefits to everyone rich or poor. The trick is to avoid a swiss cheese patchwork of taxes designed to benefit specific groups and currently incentivizes private jets. Thus you want carbon taxes that make private jets significantly more expensive not a private jet specific tax.
- frumper 3y agoGenuinely curious, how does taxing carbon increase economic efficiency?
- advisedwang 3y agoNegative externalities such as climate impact are a cost that is not priced in. This results in higher production than is actually economically optimal.
- RhysU 3y agoWhat was the incremental taxation rate that should have been assessed throughout the industrial revolution to price in then-present and then-future externalities?
- Retric 3y agoNo one rate would have been perfect over such a long period. All the way back in the 1600’s coal pollution was considered a significant problem which prompted legislation by King James I to restrict coal burning. There were few effective mitigation strategies, though ultra tall smokestacks were fairly effective in reducing harm to those in the imitate surroundings so very early on that may have been useful etc. Similarly outside of large cities the health effects where less significant. That said, as recently as 1952 a single 5 day event killed 4,000-12,000 people in London depending on how it’s counted. So, the ideal rate would have been non zero even before climate change was a significant issue.
- wunderland 3y agobecause the people who write the rules fly in private jets
- not_me_ever 3y agoWhy not tax aircons out of business? The damage is orders of magnitude higher.
- wittenbunk 3y agoPeople die without air conditioning. Private jets are a frivolous luxury. No comparison
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoSome (very small) subset of private jet flights are medical transfers to higher-level hospitals.
- not_me_ever 3y agoI lived in an African desert for 3 years. 50C+/125F+ temperatures being normal. No electricity, so no air con. Nobody died. People don't die without air con. Stupid people might, but they always will.
- arpowers 3y agoDoes anyone, without subversive motives, actually agree with the premise that removing all incentives to be successful is a good idea?
- tw04 3y agoThere’s a very large chasm between being successful, and having $10s of billions of dollars in net worth. Do you really think someone worth $100m can’t live a life of absolute luxury and choose how and if they want to ever work a day in their life?
- SoftTalker 3y agoTheir $10s of billions is not a vault full of gold coins in their basement, like Scrooge McDuck has. It represents companies and investments that are creating jobs and wealth for lots of people, probably many of the people who post here owe their job to a billionaire. Those things would not exist if "net worth" were somehow capped at $100m.
- tw04 3y ago> Those things would not exist if "net worth" were somehow capped at $100m. Of course they would, and the world would likely be a much better place for it. Those companies you speak of are mega-corporations that tend to operate outside the laws we all get to follow, and typically result in monopolies or oligopolies. There are VERY few industries that NEED a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars to operate. In almost all cases you’d be better off with hundreds of companies worth hundreds of millions competing for your business.
- pilom 3y agoSure they would. The companies would just have to have different ownership models that incentivized more distributed ownership between more people. If we somehow said that no one could own more than $100 million of a company, then for every person who has $1 billion of a company now, there would be 10 people with $100 million instead. This would be a net benefit to society.
- skymast 3y ago[dead]
- Invictus0 3y agoFeels like they're using climate change as an excuse to annoy rich people, who will not stop flying just because it costs $200 more. Why not spend your energy on something that would actually move the needle on climate change?
- myshpa 3y agoMy words ... whole air travel is 1.9% of emissions, animal ag is 15%, aprox? Phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, stop subsidies for animal agriculture (redirect them to regenerative ag. and vegetables), start massive afforesting. Right?
- ilyt 3y agoYes, you will eat bugs while rich people will continue enjoying their steaks
- Invictus0 3y agoYes, that's the whole point of being rich... you can afford luxurious things...
- friend_and_foe 3y agoYou want meat to be a thing only rich people can afford? And you justify this by saying you want to help the poor?
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoInvictus0 said they wanted to actually do something about climate change. They never said they wanted to help the poor.
- Invictus0 3y agoRead the usernames. I never said a single word about meat. What I am saying is that rich people should obviously be able to buy more things than poor people, that is the definition of being rich. And I have no qualm about rich people existing, even billionaires: presumably they generated more value for the rest of the society than their wealth, and if not, then it's up to society to change the tax code.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoPrivate jets are usually not owned by companies e.G. in the EU, but by a shell company in another jurisdiction. They are most often not owned (directly) by the people who use them, but by shell companies (for tax evasion reasons, e.G. VAT evasion) that those people control over a chain of ownerships. Same for yachts, apartments in NYC or London etc. Rich people don't own stuff (directly).
- wnc3141 3y agoI used to work in the industry. My understanding is that the vast majority of private jets (not including general aviation) is owned by or managed by firms that charter out their jet. (Like a taxi business). Of course there's nuance between those business models.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoYes kind of, but the leasing companies have only one customer, see "Lewis Hamilton avoided taxes on £16.5m jet using Isle of Man scheme The big four accountancy firm EY and Appleby [..] helped Hamilton and dozens of other clients set up seemingly artificial leasing businesses through which they rented their own jets from themselves." https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/06/lewis-hamilton-avoided-taxes-jet-isle-of-man-scheme-paradise-papers https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/06/lewis-hamilton-...
- kelnos 3y agoSo what? The proposal is a tax on fuel. That tax is paid where the fuel is bought, as a portion of its direct cost. You can't "hide" that.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago"private jet fuel" It's not private, it's a company jet. So how to you distinguish this jet from a commercial airliner? The company is smaller than United? The larger jets of United pay the lower tax? So United can no longer own small jets? This will lead to people buying larger jets, if needed they will buy A220. The effect being that more CO2 is produced. High tax if you don't sell tickets? Then the shell companies will sell tickets for the flights to the people who use the jet and own the shell company. Or smaller jets get larger tanks and go to Mexico or the Bahamas, then fly back to the US. Politicians are the worst people in second order thinking. Other explanation is they are populist and don't care if the stuff they do works. (Will need to read the bill, the article is sparse on facts) [Edit] Read the bill. It is sparse on implementation, it only says "commercial" has lower taxes, (going back to the 2017 with a hypothetical example) well Hamilton buying a ticket from the Notlimah Ltd. Airline of Panama enables the Notlimah Airline company to pay lower taxes. How is this working? Other people need to be able to buy tickets for the company to be called commercial? His friends buy tickets. Other people beside his friends need to be able to buy (how to enforce this?)? Ok, everyone with a coupon card can buy. Or: The airline changes it's terms of service to everyone with a net income of >$10M/y is allowed to buy a ticket. Or a ticket costs $1M flight, H. pays N. Airline, then the money gets back to H. to a bank account on the Bahamas. I really would like to know how to enforce this. Beside this 1 line of how it should be applied, it has pages and pages on who should get the money, one list (A) Black (B) African American (C) Asia (D) Pacific Islander (E) Other non-White race (F) Hispanic (G) Latino (H) Linguistically isolated (I) Middle Eastern and North African. and another e.G. (A) a Federally recognized Indian Tribe (B) a State-recognized Indian Tribe (C) an Alaska Native community (D) a Native Hawaiian community (E) any other Indigenous community So very low effort in the bill on how to get the money, a lot of effort in the bill on how to spread the money. And this is the trick, rich leftist politicians do: Proposing anti-rich laws that do not hurt their rich friends at all and being hurrayed by their naive voters, instead of doing things that hurt their rich friends.
- SoftTalker 3y agoPlans like this are based on envy and not reality. Private jets contribute a minimal amount of carbon emissions. Yes they are outsized compared to the emissions per-passenger on a commercial jet. Yes the people who use them to fly to lunch should probably reflect on their choices. But they are not the low hanging fruit. Private jets also provide good jobs for pilots, mechanics, airport staff, as well as jobs for the people who build them, the people who build and program the avionics, the engines, etc.
- igor47 3y agoI hate the jobs argument. It's like saying, "we should keep the concentration camps open, what are all the guards going to do". Any antisocial/harmful activity will employ people to do it, that doesn't mean we should condone it. Even more -- our civilization has a certain amount of productive capacity. I'm not saying we can or should have a central state planner to determine how to allocate it, though tax policy is often aimed at steering it. But I do wish that those skilled mechanics and engineers who work on private jets or yachts or cruise ships (and the raw resources used in their construction) would go instead to, like, more housing and offshore wind and nuclear reactors etc...
- nh23423fefe 3y agoYou hate the jobs argument but made a nazi reference in the same paragraph?
- frodowtf 3y agoWhat is your counter argument here?
- nh23423fefe 3y agogood job pretending to care about rigor.
- foverzar 3y agoThat roping nazis into every discussion is a super cheap and intellectually lazy rhetorics.
- jeffbee 3y agoWhy not tax all fossil carbon fuels with a universal refundable tax of $1/kg? That way you wallop the private jets at ~$1000/hr and more importantly you also discourage the real culprits, Americans driving around in pickup trucks, with a smaller but still effective incentive. Plus, being universally refundable, it also acts as a sort of UBI that puts money into the pockets of people who don't use fossil fuels.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoWhat is a universal refundable tax?
- jeffbee 3y agoThe revenues of the tax are redistributed to everyone with a regular payment. For example a weekly or monthly check. Americans buy roughly 1 gallon of motor fuel per day per capita, so a $5/gallon (example) tax would result in a household of 4 people receiving a $600 check every month. For people who use less than the average amount of fuel, it's free money.
- axpy 3y agoThis is basically how Canada carbon tax is supposed to work and it's far from being unanimous even if most will end up paying less.
- S_A_P 3y agoI’ve noticed a shift in tone of late on this site from “let’s invent the future” to “let’s shame the wealthy wasters of the world”. So let’s say that we have a private jet tax that is some scalable amount to make people stop flying private. 1) commercial flights typically are not as direct as a private flight can be since small regional airports can accommodate small jets and not commercial ones. So if you were to fly into Houston you could fly to the side of town you wanted instead of the north(iah) or central (hou) part of town. That saves upwards of an hour of driving afterwards. 2) does this fix our carbon problem? Unfortunately no. 3) even electric cars are 40-50 years away from going away. There is nowhere near the same amount of charging infrastructure in the US to support mass adoption. The only real way to get adoption of cleaner technologies is to make them better than their carbon generating alternatives in most if not every way. I’m all for getting off of fossil fuels. I’m personally looking for opportunities to push forward better and cleaner energy technologies. Articles like these are just journalistic dunks on the rich. Of course we have to mention Kim K who is the epitome of a wasteful vapid human being who flys around going from lunch to party on her jet. Of 8 billion people there are 1000 who ride planes too much. Never mind that many countries still burn coal for electricity we need to stop these rich folks!!!
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> I’ve noticed a shift in tone of late on this site from “let’s invent the future” to “let’s shame the wealthy wasters of the world”. These aren't mutually exclusive. > Never mind that many countries still burn coal for electricity we need to stop these rich folks!!! We are talking about the people managing companies that tell us, the "regular folk", to recycle, to lower our electricity usage, to stop wasting water. The same companies responsible for the vast majority of the CO emissions, plastic production, water waste dumping. Of course regular people are mad at the rich. They have every right to be. Private jets are just the tip of the iceberg. They should not be a thing, and they are a symbol of how the super rich are above everyone else. I would compare it to hunting rhinos: it is likely that the very few people who could afford this aren't behind the extinction of white rhinos in Africa, but they still should not be allowed to do it.
- 3y ago
- pasttense01 3y agoPrivate jets are not just used to transport rich people, they are used for all the same reasons one uses other aviation. For example suppose a factory has a major equipment failure and replacement parts are all the way across the country--and it is costing many thousands of dollars an hour with the factory down. One might well use a private jet to get the replacement equipment there as quickly as possible.
- themerone 3y agoIf you want to use taxes to cut CO2 the low hanging fruit is the livestock industry (especially beef.) Of course, most Americans would see that as an attack on freedom, and both parties are afraid of being seen as anti farmer.
- nunez 3y agoBecause many of the people that make the rules rent or own jets? Because there are many good reasons to own a jet beyond "I must flex on the poors?" Because there are many kinds of business and charter jets and most of them use super energy-efficient engines that don't produce as much of a carbon footprint as usually reported?
- huijzer 3y agoBecause life is full of power laws and some of the people flying private jets have outsized effect on the economy. (I’m not saying I think it’s fair or something. It’s a value free observation.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jpn 3y agoTax fuel instead if we care about the environment. Let the market decide how to prioritize.
- frankreyes 3y agoBecause the main users of private jets are policymakers. For example when the G20 COP26 summit https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-private-jets-take-leaders-to-cop26-climate-summit-burning-over-1000-tons-of-co2/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/05/118-... >118 Private Jets Take Leaders To COP26 Climate Summit Burning Over 1,000 Tons Of CO2 > As the COP26 climate conference opened on Monday (1 November), 50 private jets landed at Glasgow and Edinburgh airports, ferrying their passengers to one of the most critical environmental summits in history.