Austria introduces departure tax

Austria is levying a new departure tax on those passing through its airports, mirroring the contentious tax introduced by Malta some years ago.

Introduced as a pro-environment measure aimed at mitigating carbon emissions of the airline industry, all passengers leaving Austria on short-haul flights will have to pay a tax of €8. Those leaving on long-haul flights will be slapped with a departure tax of €40.

The new measure will of course affect all Austrians visiting Malta and the many hundreds of Maltese flying to Vienna every year.

The Austrian government’s announcement has been met with anger by the European aviation industry, which has called it a new tax to reduce the deficit.

“If the intention is to boost fiscal revenues, I fear the Austrian government may find it has got its sums wrong,” said the secretary general of the Association of European Airlines, Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus.

“They should learn the lesson of the Netherlands, which abandoned its own passenger tax in 2009 after just 12 months when it was discovered it had cost the economy €1 billion in return for just €300 million in revenues.”

In the Dutch case, many passengers chose to dodge the tax by driving to Brussels or Dusseldorf. According to the AEA, which also represents Air Malta, the Austrian experience would be very similar.

For a number of years until 2008, Malta used to impose a €46 departure tax on passengers starting their journey from Malta. The tax was eliminated following infringement procedures by the European Commission against Malta on grounds of discrimination.