from Sunday Herald, 15 November 2015
Scottish ministers have come under fierce fire for planning to boost climate pollution by cutting one of the few taxes on flying.
The government’s promise to halve and then abolish air passenger duty (APD) in Scotland would be “totally counterproductive” say leading environmentalists, who are pressing for the tax to stay.
The SNP government wants to help the Scottish economy by cutting APD 50 per cent in April 2018 and then getting rid of it altogether “when public finances permit”. But the plan has provoked growing opposition because it could make it more difficult to meet Scotland’s ambitious targets to combat climate change.
Mike Robinson, a board member of the umbrella group, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, who sits on the government’s APD stakeholder forum, pointed out that aviation has kept growing despite the tax.
“All this cut will do is to leave a handful of regular fliers slightly better off, the aviation industry a little richer, and the tax man and the environment very much the poorer,” he told the Sunday Herald.
“And this in an industry which according to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UK Treasury is one of the least taxed industries in the world.”
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