Thread: Italy Imposing New Departure Tax, EU Weighs in..

The airline industry is taking Italy and Norway to task for introducing new passenger taxes that it says will hurt visitor numbers.
IATA has denounced the Italian government for its plans to impose an additional €2.50 ($2.70) levy on the departure tax at Italy’s airports, and the newly launched Airlines for Europe (A4E) has also weighed into the debate.
At the association’s official launch event in Amsterdam at the end of last week, A4E said that what it described as “unreasonable taxes” had been proven to suppress demand and were “bad for passengers and bad for the economy.” It said that one of the key issues on which all five founding member airline groups (Air France KLM, easyJet, IAG, Lufthansa, and Ryanair) were agreed was vigorous opposition against such taxes.
A4E pointed out that, in the Netherlands, the Dutch government had withdrawn a ticket tax in 2009 because of the negative impact it had on passenger numbers. Following the removal of the tax, “passenger numbers bounced back,” A4E said.
EasyJet CEO Carolyn McCall said: “What taxation does is it suppresses demand and there is ample evidence of that. The Netherlands saw passenger numbers increase significantly as soon as they removed the tax, and in Ireland the same thing happened. Tourism in Ireland last year grew about 8% when the tax was taken away. A PwC report commissioned in the UK showed that if UK air passenger duty was removed, it would boost GDP 1.7% and create 60,000 jobs by 2020.
“We are extremely disappointed that, after the Aviation Strategy was published, the Italian government announced an incremental tax of €2.50 per passenger and Norway is proposing an €8 tax per departing passenger. That will affect passenger numbers because it is not airlines that will end up paying for this. This is a consumer issue and it will suppress demand and passengers will be affected by higher prices.”
A4E said that “all unreasonable taxes on aviation activity should be removed,” and pointed out that consumers had benefited from the liberalization of aviation in Europe in the 1990s, with lower fares and a wider choice of regional and international routes.