Who still understands? Flags hang upside down. We complain bitterly. We sigh under the high prices. We will soon vote for protest parties en masse. And never before have so many people booked a holiday outside the Netherlands in January as this year. More than 3 million Dutch people have already booked a trip across the border. They often go by plane.
The travel industry is happy with it, after the difficult corona years it has had. But in recent weeks we wrote about the skyrocketing vegetable prices, we gauged the rising prices in the supermarkets, we described the lamentations in the gas stations and we reported the high inflation figures every month. You would think, reason enough to keep your hand on the purse strings.
But none of that. We crave trips abroad. We are assisted in this by the government. While we pay 65 cents excise duty and 21 percent VAT per liter of petrol, there is still no tax on kerosene, the fuel for airplanes.
As a result, the following offers for air travel: return ticket to London, from 16 euros. Return ticket to Ibiza from 17 euros. Also there and back to Barcelona does not have to cost more than 16 euros. In practice it will often turn out to be a few tenners more expensive, but it remains bizarrely cheap.
Taxation and VAT on kerosene is more than logical. The European Union thinks it needs the means to achieve the climate goals. For the Netherlands it has an additional advantage. After all, higher prices for airline tickets lead to lower demand. So fewer flights.
And that is exactly what the government is aiming for. The number of flights from Schiphol must ultimately be reduced to 440,000 per year. Airlines want to prevent this through the courts.
The government can easily use the price instrument to reduce the number of flight movements. Just charge VAT and taxes. Then the shrinkage will happen automatically.