Flight tax will affect all flights: What additional costs can you expect?

To fund his tax shift – which should benefit the middle class – Vivaldi thought of several new taxes…sorry, many new “sources of income”. These include taxes on capital gains from real estate, actual rental income and airline tickets.

If Minister Vincent van Bettieghem’s (CD&V) major tax reform of a “fairer” tax system is postponed indefinitely (due to another incompatibility), a mini-tax shift – good for €300m – is the first hurdle to overcome. . stands in its way.

The Minister hoped that an agreement would be reached by the end of the year, but the reticence of the various partners and counter-suggestions frustrated the meeting again. Talks resumed on January 10. to write No Libre Belgium. They were able to look at various measures that should boost the purchasing power of low- and middle-income people by financing different things (again not everyone agrees on this).

One of these new measures is the so-called tax for airline tickets of less than 500 kilometers. This tax affects not only business trips, but also tourist trips to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and France.

All travelers affected

As announced at the end of the stormy secret budget meeting in October 2021, the tax will include all flights. The tax is expected to generate around 30 million euros. There will be an additional cost of €10 per ticket if the destination of the flight is less than 500 km from Brussels. If you travel more than 500 km from Belgium, but still reside within the European Economic Area (EEA), you pay an additional €2. For trips of more than 500 km outside the European Economic Area, there is a tax of €4.

This means that anyone who chooses to travel by plane will be affected. This is a political option: this allows the amount of each ticket to be reduced, but more tickets are taxed. If all goes well, the tax will be introduced in April. The airlines, which have had two horrific years, are of course not happy about this. But Belgium is by no means the only country to have imposed such a tax, rather it is a recommendation by the European Commission to favor alternative means of transport.

Whether it is 2, 4 or 10 euros. There is no guarantee that this tax will discourage people from boarding a plane. But the federal budget will thank them.

(lp, bzg)