Sustainability-oriented tax-based own resources for the European Union: a European carbon-based flight ticket tax
The failed attempts of several European countries to introduce a flight ticket tax and the pressure on those EU countries still levying such a tax clearly demonstrate the limits of national aviation taxation. Assigning a carbon-based flight ticket tax to the EU level would reduce the tax enforcement problems inherent to mobile tax bases and put a stop to harmful tax competition between EU member countries. By replacing a part of national contributions to the EU budget a flight ticket tax can strengthen sustainability-orientation of the EU system of own resources. Using a new data set, which assigns to approximately 75 to 90 percent of the respective intra and extra EU routes flown in the year 2014 the corresponding carbon emissions per passenger, the paper estimates the expected revenue from implementing a carbon-based flight ticket tax at the EU level for carbon tax levels between 25 and 35 € per ton of carbon emissions.