Household Bills
Budget 2014: Osborne freezes fuel duty as tax on long-haul flights is cut
A planned hike in fuel duty has been scrapped, George Osborne announced today, while taxes on long-haul flights have been standardised.
Drivers will be saved a price increase of 20p per litre, Osborne said, thanks to the Treasury’s decision to abandon the planned increase.
Osborne also announced that from next year all long-haul flights will carry the same band B tax rate currently levied on flights to the US.
The Chancellor’s revision of the Air Passenger Duty (APD) will seek to “end the crazy system where you pay less tax travelling to Hawaii than you do travelling to China or India”.
According to Osborne the tax hit puts off tourists and creates a “sense of injustice among our Caribbean and South Asian communities here in Britain”.
Private jets didn’t fare quite as well; increased duties were included in the new Budget.
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Chris Clarkson, managing director of online travel agency www.sunshine.co.uk, said: “Those people hoping for APD to be scrapped entirely one day will be waiting a very long time, if not forever, for that to happen. At least an increase in APD wasn’t announced, as that would have been the sixth time in seven years that it had risen.
“I think the fact a rise in APD wasn’t announced in this year’s Budget was the best we could have hoped for. The reductions planned for long-haul flights won’t benefit those holidaymakers looking to take trips closer to home, but at least it’s a start.”