'We're all in this together" sounds more hollow the more you tap it. Back in March, the chancellor George Osborne announced that passengers on private jets would have to pay the same air passenger duty (APD) the rest of us do. "The wealthiest should not escape the tax the ordinary holidaymaker has to pay," trumpeted Osborne through a rolled-up copy of the Socialist Worker. Except that now Osborne has announced this week that the so-called "Learjet tax", expected to start next year, won't kick in until 2013.
Why the delay? A Treasury spokesperson says: "We had a consultation and one of the things that came out of it was there wasn't enough time for the industry to make the transition." According to the Treasury, the predicted revenue from the estimated 80,000 private flights is just £5m a year, and as Adam Twidell, CEO of PrivateFly, a booking network for private planes, points out, it will be difficult to collect APD from thousands of small jet companies and individuals.
Of course, we know about the benefits private jet travel affords its owners: no hanging around at airports, no having to sit next to poor people, and, according to leaked UK Border Agency emails earlier this month, sometimes no need to go through passport control. Johnny Depp travels by private plane so he can smoke; Simon Cowell says "the champagne's better". You can live in tax havens and commute to the UK in little over an hour, as several Monaco residents do. You can use them to ferry child stars to perform for you – as Charlotte Church revealed at the Leveson inquiry this week, she was flown to New York on Rupert Murdoch's private plane to sing at his wedding in 1999. Before January this year, jet owners didn't even have to pay VAT on their purchases in this country.
The extravagance of private aviation soared to new heights recently when a Saudi prince reportedly bought a £190m Airbus A380, and converted at a cost of more than £100m to include a garage, pool and concert hall. Presumably the Treasury's new APD shouldn't concern him too much.
