By IRNA,
London : The US has launched scathing criticism of UK plans to introduce an airline tax next year, accusing the British government of seeking to generate extra revenues rather than its declared aim to lower carbon dioxide emissions.
In a letter leaked to the Daily Telegraph, the US Embassy in London went as far as suggesting that the new tax could breach international laws.
“The embassy, on behalf of the government of the United States, wishes to express its deep concern with the proposal, which raises significant policy and legal issues,” the letter said.
The British government is planning to sharply increase the amount of money raised from airline taxes from November 2009 in a move, which will reportedly give the government a net extra annual revenue of more than half a billion pounds (one billion dollars).
But the US embassy said the proposal, “although cast as an environmental measure, appears in reality to constitute nothing more than a device for generating additional revenue from the airline community.”
“There is no linkage between the funds collected from airlines and the mitigation of any environmental impact of airline emissions or any other environmental problem,” it said about the plan that charges a levy on each flight instead of passengers paying a surcharge.
The criticism was seen as embroiling the US and UK in a major diplomatic dispute ahead of President George W Bush’s visit to London next weekend, his first in five years.
The letter was said to also detail a number of international treaties and agreements which would allegedly be breached by the new tax and raises the spectre of the US threatening legal action.
According to the Telegraph, the government has defended the plan, insisting that the new tax “intended to ensure the industry makes a greater contribution towards its environmental costs.”
“The Government aims to have a fairer duty more in line with the environmental impacts of flights, including the distance travelled,” a British Treasury spokesman said.
“We are committed to meeting our international obligations under the Chicago Convention and the EU-US Open Skies bilateral agreement and would not propose a measure that we considered illegal,” the spokesman also said.