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Don't Tax Me, Bro!; Spirit Air fights back
Topic Started: Jul 28 2011, 04:25 AM (165 Views)
Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
Were we all aware that these fees were being considered? I guess it has to come from somewhere, but a beleaguered airline industry does not seem the place to start.

http://donttaxmebro.org/
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
The other side of the story (LA Times)

Quote:
 
Finally, good news from the gridlock in Congress. Or maybe not. The federal government Saturday stopped collecting taxes on airline tickets, so flying suddenly got cheaper, right? Wrong. Many airlines just increased their airfares to match the tax drop. At stake can be about $30 on a $300 ticket, the Associated Press says.

What happened is that squabbling lawmakers failed to extend laws that authorize the government to collect the airline ticket tax and other aviation-related taxes. So the laws, and the authority, expired at midnight Friday.

In interviews Saturday, spokesmen for JetBlue Airways and American Airlines said their airlines raised fares even as they stopped collecting the taxes. And they said many others in the industry had done the same.

"So in effect the taxes are not being collected, but the price paid by the customer remains the same," American's Tim Smith said.

Except now the airline gets to keep more of the money.

"Given the Air Transport Association's constant complaints about the burden that government taxes and fees impose on air travelers, we are deeply perplexed by the industry's pocketing of passenger tax revenue," Rockerfeller, D-W.V., the Senate Commerce Committee chairman, and Cantwell, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Aviation Operations, Safety and Security Subcommittee, wrote to Richard Anderson, chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines and chairman of the Air Transport Association, the airline industry's trade group.

"As we have heard from the airlines for many years, these fees, all of which are passed onto the customer, depress the demand for air travel, hurting the industry's bottom line," they added. "We are left to conclude that your previous assertions were incorrect about the impact of taxes and fees on the industry."

The senators urged airlines to either put the extra money into an escrow account so it could be transferred back to the FAA to fund needed improvements after Congress reinstates the taxes or pass the savings on to passengers.


Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
Defensive move. The government will eventually pass pass or re-up those laws, and when they do they are quite likely to come after the airlines for the back taxes. I'd do the same if I were an airline.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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