Travel between Time Zones to be taxed from 2012

Airline passengers will have to pay a new time zone tax on air travel tickets starting from April 2012. A new bill passed in the EU and WTO introduces an additional tax of 0.80 Euro or $1 USD for each time zone a passenger crosses during their air travel.

One day offer only: Pay your time zone tax today and get half off

The tax will in part fund an upgrade in physical protection for the world’s many atomic clocks. New shields are to be installed to prevent damage caused by “…earthquakes, hurricanes or a host of other potential natural disasters”.

Read the full bill here

Land Tax in 2014

Taxing of time zone crossings over land in motor vehicles, trains and buses, will not start until 2014, and is proving a little more difficult to administer. The bill proposes electronic readers to be placed in strategic junctions and added to the driver’s road tax to ensure that motorists also pay their dues.

Will you be affected? Check out the map with proposed tax junctions.

Atomic clocks communicate time data to air traffic control towers via radio signals:
– It is of vital importance that the buildings which house the atomic clocks must be protected from potential natural disasters, WTO officials said yesterday.

US protests - exempts local residents

Many US officials in Chicago are protesting the bill, claiming that such a tax – although not very high – poses a major potential problem for people who live in close proximity to a time zone border, and that it might affect housing prices and business developments in these areas. A system for exempting local residents is therefore under review.

People in the Spain-Portugal border region and along the eastern and western European borders will be the most affected in Europe. In the eastern part of the world, Russia and Australia will have to implement multiple tax points. China, however, will not have to tax its roads as it only has one Time Zone (Beijing time) despite the size of the country covering four time zones.