The Swedish Aviation Tax: Some Initial Comments from a State Aid Perspective

The article concerns the Swedish aviation tax which was introduced in 2018. A tax policy approach is applied to not only consider tax technicalities but also the ideals and goals of the tax from the perspective of the Swedish legislature. Resulting in an inclusion of not only legal aspects but also a consideration of how politics and economics influences the design of such a tax. The author concludes that there are several potential State aid problems with the present design of the tax, eg too low tax rates in order to fulfil its environmental policy objective, an exemption of transit and transfer passengers that distorts the competition between airlines and which is not justified or exempted from State aid rules.