I hope this is an embellished rumour - the word is that a new 6,000 mile plus tax on anyone leaving beautiful Britain will be around STG170!!

What to do? Leave Britain on the train and fly home from Paris?

Why not just fly to a nearer destination then board the final leg(s) to Oz from there?

You only need to show the ticket and boarding pass to the first destination - not your fault
you had a change of mind in DXB and suddenly decided you want wanted to go to Ostraya.

Well, that means Melbourne to Dublin and return by Etihad - stuff UK.



Mike

It's not a departure tax, it's a contribution to help the fight against Climate Change:hmm:

You will pay £170 if you fly over 6000 miles and above economy class. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pbr2008/pbrn20.pdf

It may work out cheaper if you hop over the channel and fly from there but other EU countries will probably add their own taxes. It may not be worth it if you factor the inconvenience in.

Climate Change my Ar**!!!!
It's just another Bloody Rip-Off.

Some may consider it a small price to pay for the benefit of getting 6000 miles away from the UK.:E

Don't come in the 1st place as London can get bar staff from many countries.

You could get there for nowt once all you had to do was steal a loaf of bread'
:)

This from the UK Daily Telegraph
Band D duty will rise from £55 to £85. A retired couple visiting grandchildren in Australia, for example, and flying in premium economy class would, from Monday, pay £340, up from £220.
The irony with this is that coming from one of the most class orientated societies the world has known they are also taxing you on the type of seat you are in.

The extortion will be higher if you have the gall to want some comfort and fly better than economy.

Not only that but VAT is going up to 20%.:eek:
What to do? Leave Britain on the train and fly home from Paris?
The answer is simple.

Don't go to the UK.No great loss,lots of other places in the world to see which don't tax everything in existence until it is no longer in existence.
You could get there for nowt once all you had to do was steal a loaf of bread'
Well,we are more selective these days but you might have noticed that many after serving a sentence decided not go back home.

It's not a departure tax, it's a contribution to help the fight against Climate Changehttp://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/yeees.gif





Climate Change my Ar**!!!!
It's just another Bloody Rip-Off.


Alastair Darling, about a year ago admitted that the taxation raised from APD was going to fund the banking bailout.

"I am quite blunt about it, we need to raise money to pay for some things we have done... If unemployment goes up there is a cost obviously to the family, there is cost in increased benefits, Northern Rock has cost a lot of money."
Alistair Darling speaking in London

May 11, 2008

United States says air tax is illegal

Dominic O’Connell

MINISTERS have flown into another business tax row after the US government made a blistering attack on a new £2.5 billion aviation duty, questioning its green credentials and claiming that it broke international law.



United States says air tax is illegal - Times Online (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article3908469.ece)

full times article for historical purposes..


MINISTERS have flown into another business tax row after the US government made a blistering attack on a new £2.5 billion aviation duty, questioning its green credentials and claiming that it broke international law.

The extraordinary criticism was made in an official diplomatic note sent to the Foreign Office by the American embassy in London last month.
It said the new charge, proposed in this year’s budget as a replacement for air-passenger duty, “raises significant policy and legal issues” and asks whether it can be justified when the government plans a third runway at Heathrow.

It is understood John Byerly, deputy assistant secretary for transportation and America’s top aviation negotiator, met Treasury officials last week to press home the argument.

The row with the Americans – and British Airways, which is also opposed to the tax – is the latest in a succession of business tax debacles to hit Labour.

Entrepreneurs were incensed by changes (later partly rescinded) to the capital-gains-tax regime, while the City raged against a crackdown on wealthy nondomiciled taxpayers.

Meanwhile multinationals are threatening to quit Britain over proposals on the taxation of foreign earnings, with The Sunday Times revealing last week how a delegation from some of the world’s biggest companies visited Downing Street to confront Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling on the issue.
All this comes on top of Labour’s other fiscal nightmare, the fall-out from the scrapping of the 10p income-tax band.

The new flight levy, which the Treasury says will help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, is proposed as a replacement for air passenger duty (APD), which has been in place for more than a decade. APD was controversially doubled last year, with passengers paying up to £80 for a one-way trip, depending on the length of the flight and class of travel.

The Treasury wants to change the basis of the duty, moving it from individual passengers to a per-plane basis. This will raise
The American diplomatic note said the switch contravenes the 1944 Chicago Convention, the treaty that governs most of international aviation. It claimed it was also in breach of the open-skies deal hammered out last year between Europe and America.

The Americans also query the basis of the duty, saying the green claims are farfetched. “The Treasury’s proposal, although cast as an environmental measure, appears in reality to constitute nothing more than a device for generating additional revenue from the airline community,” says the note.

The duty was likely to reduce the number of flights from Britain. “This would seem an anomalous result, however, given the focus in the UK on, among other things, restoration of the competitiveness of Heathrow airport with the opening of terminal 5 and the consideration of a third runway.”

While BA and other long-haul airlines are opposed to the duty, budget airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet support it.

American government sources said Washington could bring a case against the UK at the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the watchdog for world aviation, or under the disputes procedure of last year’s EU-US open-skies agreement.

“The government is in a cleft stick, caught between the Americans and the long-haul airlines on one side and the budget airlines and the green lobby on the other,” said one executive.

“The Treasury’s proposal, although cast as an environmental measure, appears in reality to constitute nothing more than a device for generating additional revenue from the airline community,”And there, in one sentence, is the reason for it. As a result of thirteen years of socialist squandering, the UK is bust, and HMRC needs to screw every penny it can from taxpayers to make up for it. No bleating please about it being all the fault of the banks. Blair/Brown and the idiots that voted for them played the major part in this disaster and as usual the miscreants get off free while the little people they betrayed are trampled on.

You could get there for nowt once all you had to do was steal a loaf of bread'


They were the lucky ones :ok:

Blair/Brown and the idiots that voted for them played the major part in this disaster

Yeah; that'll be why the UK is the only country in trouble, right enough. :rolleyes:

some applause...


Blair/Brown and the idiots that voted for them played the major part in this disaster

:D:D


Don't go to the UK.No great loss,lots of other places in the world to see which don't tax everything in existence until it is no longer in existence.

:D:D

Yeah; that'll be why the UK is the only country in trouble, right enough. :rolleyes:

Blair/Brown had a choice as to whether or not to follow the route of easy money, lax credit and fiscal profilgacy. They could have reigned things in at the beginning with simple controls. Many other countries took the sane route but "prudence" knew better.

When Brown doubled the tax a couple of years ago, it was linked to the decision to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Airline passengers paying for weapons of mass destruction.

Japan 170.4%
Italy 103.7
France 67
Canada 62.3
US 60.8
Australia 60
UK 47.2

You may also wish to look at Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

Yes, some countries have ridden the storm better, but some of the world's major economies have done a lot worse than the UK.

If anyone wants to discuss this further, can I suggest we move to the UK hamsterwheel?

this is actually an extract from a socialist publication (!)



seemed to harbor the insane delusion that an island of 60 million souls could all make a living in the world on the backs of the mysterious activities of a few tens of thousands of people in the City and Canary Wharf.

He therefore called for ‘[B]light touch regulation,’ in other words less regulation on the City and finance capital.

Before his Mansion House audience in 2007, he called for, "a risk-based regulatory approach". It was an old theme.

In the same hall three years before, he pledged that "in budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers" (2004). This is the approach that got us in the present pickle.

Likewise he told the CBI in 2005 how he proposed to crack down on red tape about boring stuff like health and safety standards that got in the way of profit-making. “No inspection without justification, no form filling without justification, and no information requirements without justification, not just a light touch but a limited touch.”

Well, it's yer own fault for going around Being Australian In A Public Place.



Tch! Some people....:rolleyes::}

If I was 40 years younger, I'd be looking to emigrate to Oz or Kiwi. For visitors from there, I'd advise flying from Paris or Dublin. Paris has the advantage that you can get there by train.....

We can look at creative accounting but this thread is about the ridiculous imposition of a departure tax on those leaving the UK based on how far they are going to travel as well as the class of their ticket.

This is in addition to the increase in the UK VAT.

However,to show how figures can change depending on who gives you the numbers here is a comparison between the UK and Australia from the Economist.
Australia has a public debt of $254,980,000,000
Debt per capita $11,508.33
Population 22,162,191
Public debt as a % of GDP 22.3%
UK has a public debt of $1,667,146,301,370
Debt per capita $26,816.58
Population 62,149,589
Public debt as a % of GDP 76.0%

Interesting.

LON-JNB = 5634 miles
LON-CPT = 6011 miles

Japan 170.4%
Italy 103.7
France 67
Canada 62.3
US 60.8
Australia 60
UK 47.2

I don't know where that list of figures comes from, but the British national debt is currently £4.8 Trillion - or about £80,000 per head of the population and which is 218% of a GDP of £2.2 Trillion. Maybe they really mean the budget deficit?

Blacksheep. Now come on, mate, this is JB! You are not supposed to dissect and analyse posts. You are supposed to take them as read and then attack them from a tangent, howling in derision as you do so!

Get aboard now, please.

I think that this opinion will be more in the JB spirit Threaddie.

I am sure that our new defence partners, The French, will stand shoulder to shoulder on this one, and levy a similar level of tax on flights of similar distances from French airports. Of course they will!

this is actually an extract from a socialist publication (!)

Well, he was only following the tradition of Thatcher, who thought it was fine to close down manufacturing because we could manage perfectly happily taking in each other's washing.

Catch Eurostar to Paris, have slap-up meal with money saved, fly from C de G on Qantas Airbus 380.

Er................. well, maybe on Something Else, then. But first part of suggestion is valid.

Well, he was only following the tradition of Thatcher, who thought it was fine to close down manufacturing because we could manage perfectly happily taking in each other's washing.

OK, I'll bite. Point out any statement Thatcher made that would indicate that sentiment.

I think Thatcher was working on the false premise that as far as manufacturing went, labour costs would always be less in somewhere like China or India, and so the UK could not compete. That is true to a certain extent, depending on the product.

Remind me, who brought the UK Departure Tax in? Ken Clarke (Conservative) during the Major (Conservative) govt - alongside other gems like Insurance Premium Tax!

That Labour lot weren't too cleaver but they ain't responsible for everything!

Well, he was only following the tradition of Thatcher, who thought it was fine to close down manufacturing

I see it as more of an act of kindness in putting down a terminally ill creature then giving it a decent burial.

Not all of it was terminally ill. Of course, it had the usual unexpected consequences. Various integrated circuits for such things as crypto encoders and decoders were made in the UK, in UK factories, with special facilities in the devices to prevent copying. As UK demand fell, it became less economic to manufacture in the UK, so manufacture went to China....As with so many other electronic parts.

So now you have very little semconductor manufacturing capability left in the UK, although there is a lot of design capability for things that are made in China or Taiwan....

Not a new discovery. In 1982, MoD Navy was astounded to find that the only source left for klystrons for the local oscillators of some of their radars was Poland!

Moral (as the US found in 1941) it is easier to dismantle the military-industrial manufacturing complex than to build it up in a hurry, which is when you most need it! A lesson which they had learnt very well until the mid 1980s when 'economies' were needed...

Hmm.

Why not just fly to a nearer destination then board the final leg(s) to Oz from there?

I've done a bit of research: On an Australian passport, at least, with a 6 month visa boarding in Australia will be denied unless you have a return ticket.

If you have a visa for a longer time, say 2 years, you are ok with a one-way ticket to the UK.

Then you are quite at liberty to do as has been suggested here: fly or otherwise get to a European airport, then fly to Australia and save the 6,000 mile tax (depending on the price of the one-way from Paris or whatever).

Not bad advice from a sciolist publication!

Is the final destination the deciding factor in how much tax is charged ?

ie if flying to Australia via Dubai with a connecting flight onwards on a different aircraft would the tax be the same as flying BA or QF via Singapore on the same aircraft with just a refuelling stop ?:confused:

Two of us, LHR to Washington DC with Tricky Richy's airline. Tax came as a bit of a shock, quite frankly, and it's not all the greedy UK Gummint :ooh:

Operating Airline Fuel & Insurance Surcharge YQ GBP 161.00
USA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service Fee XA GBP 6.20
USA Immigration Service Fee XY GBP 8.60
USA Customs User Fee YC GBP 6.80
UK Air Passenger Duty GB GBP 240.00
UK Passenger Service Charge UB GBP 45.94
USA Transportation Tax US GBP 19.80

Total GBP 488.34 :eek:

Just found the answer I'd been looking for:

HM Revenue & Customs (http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000505&propertyType=document#P224_9309)

Seems like a 24 hour stop over on flights out of the UK is what's needed. I'm sure a few European airlines are gearing up at BAs expense.

RJM,,

I hope that I will not insult you by assuming that you're old enough to remember this exchange, in Hansard, 18th November, 1981 (how time flies):
Senator Jones asked the Minister representing the Treasurer, upon notice, on 15 October 1981:

(1) Has Australia the dubious distinction of levying the highest rate of airport departure tax of the major tourism-orientated countries.

(2) Is departure tax levied at airports in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Greece, Italy, Germany, or any other country that furnishes Australia with tourist dollars.

(3) Will the Treasurer consider eliminating this iniquitous levy, dubbed by American tourists as the 'suffering sucker tax' and so recognise the importance to Australia of the tourism industry; if not, will the Treasurer consider mitigating the effects of the tax by exempting tourists and family vacationers as well as families visiting migrant relatives in Australia and migrants visiting relatives overseas.[-1]

(4) Will the Treasurer also ensure that any revenue gained from the tax be used to boost the tourism industry and upgrade airport facilities instead of disappearing into consolidated revenue.


Senator Dame Margaret Guilfoyle —The Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

(1) and (2) Departure taxes, in one form or another, are levied in over 100 countries many of whom provide Australia with tourist traffic[0]. The form of the tax varies and it is often incorporated in the price of the ticket so that travellers may be unaware of the existence and size of the impost[1]. While the total amount of tax in overseas countries varies significantly, Australia certainly does not have the highest total. For example, New Zealand charges a levy of $35 on all adult tickets purchased there, together with an airport tax of $2[2].

(3) The departure tax was introduced in the 1978-79 Budget as a general revenue raising measure. In the three years since then the tax appears[3] to have had little, if any, impact on tourist travel to and from Australia and the tax is not significant when seen in relation to the total costs of international travel. The exclusions suggested by the honourable senator would seriously limit the usefulness of the tax as a general revenue raising measure; they would also add major complications to its administration.

(4) As a general principle, Government expenditures are best allocated according to the priority attaching to those needs [4] and not simply on the basis of revenue collected from a particular tax. Unless expenditure proposals compete for a share of revenue on their merits, expenditures which happen to be financed by a particular tax may take precedence over higher priority needs [5] not financed in this way.

ISTR it was $10 then.

SO
[-1] Labor oik wanting to tax only businessmen doing business. Wouldn't that include parliamentarians? That's okay, it's paid for.
[0] A trillion flies eat shit, so it must be good
[1] nothing short of fraud if you ask me
[2] don't look at me - Kev over there is worse (even though I am meant to answer to my constituents)
[3] I don't know
[4] from those according to their ability...
[5] the DSS, in other words

Sadly, I'm more than old enough to remember that.

It's a long way from when we used to give the Poms an oar for ten quid (assisted passage).

It would be fascinating, and will never happen, if we could be given a breakdown of the money collected in 2009 through APD and what Green projects it was spent on. I am paying APD, to this end, and I am then invited to pay even more to offset the carbon emissions generated by my flight! Where does this money go? I think we should be told.

A mate of mine is going to Australia in Feb so I e-mailed him to tell him about the increase. He thinks it doesn't apply as he has already bought the tickets but I'm not so sure (particularly sine the Customs site says "It becomes due when the aircraft first takes off on the passenger’s flight").

Does anyone know for definite what rate of departure tax will apply in this case?

I believe that the tax payable is at the rate payable at the time of departure. :sad:

APD paying for "Green" projects

It would be fascinating, and will never happen, if we could be given a breakdown of the money collected in 2009 through APD and what Green projects it was spent on. I am paying APD, to this end, and I am then invited to pay even more to offset the carbon emissions generated by my flight! Where does this money go? I think we should be told.



AQ2FI,

The square root of sweet FA, as previously posted...

Darling admits APD will help pay for banking crisis
Nov 02, 2009 11:00


Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted that Air Passenger Duty (APD) is a tax to help fight the banking crisis, according to reports.

Speaking (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1224195/COMMENT-ALEX-BRUMMER-Rocky-flight-green-taxes.html) in London last month, Darling told The Journal (http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/10/23/tax-on-flying-helped-us-to-maintain-north-jobs-61634-24995975/): "I am quite blunt about it, we need to raise money to pay for some things we have done.
"If unemployment goes up there is a cost obviously to the family, there is cost in increased benefits, Northern Rock has cost a lot of money."

A Treasury spokesman confirmed to Travel Weekly APD has always been a "revenue raising instrument".



Darling admits APD will help pay for banking crisis - www.travelweekly.co.uk (http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2009/11/02/32266/darling-admits-apd-will-help-pay-for-banking-crisis.html)

The thing is, and this really pulls three yards of barbed wire out of my starfish, is that the present government is powerless to rescind it. Look at this way:
* prevents pounds being spent abroad
* rips off tourists
* it's not exactly the money shot when an election comes around
* unless they can provide a clear correlation between abandoning the policy and sending Somalians home and recouping the lost revenue accordingly, it would seem that they are favouring the wealthy. I'm quite old-fashioned that way; that's what I expect the Conservatives and Liberals to do

Let's face it. We're stuffed. By having the effrontery to want to travel PE to Australia, we're clearly unerwuenscht. It was bad enough to be sodomized by the last lot. Now we just give the Coalition a reacharound instead.

Had they any courage, of course, they'd tear up the pornographic statutes passed by their predecessors. They don't, and they won't.

.SO

sea oxen,

thank you for the imagary and thought processes. have to agree with you on that.

by the way, i may well use this expression myself this really pulls three yards of barbed wire out of my starfish

of course, use will be acknowledged to the originator and royalty payments made.

*why isnt there a Jet Blast FOR Jet Blast?

here we go again ! Pallet 1 or that big LDC please chief, and don't forget the case of beer:{:ok: