1 November 2024 will mark the 30th anniversary of Air Passenger Duty. Hated by passengers, loved by Governments. Air Passenger Duty went live in 1994, but was introduced in 1993 by Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who thought it was unfair that international agreements let air transport fly on fully duty rebated aviation kerosene, as a result being the only form of transport that was not taxed. As a counterbalance, Clarke brought in an excise duty collected by airlines on passengers who start their flights from the UK. It was never positioned as a ‘green’ tax. Clarke said at the time, “I need to raise revenue…in a way which does least damage to the economy.” The Finance Bill that brought in APD and Insurance Premium Tax was the largest to date, and HM Customs and Excise had not introduced taxes of such weight since the creation of VAT. The Assistant Secretary at Revenue Duties A in Manchester put in a bid to take on the new tax as, “it sounded interesting and it would help ...

 I always thought that in Bram Stoker’s novel DRACULA, Jonathan Harker would have made a good excise officer. The way he follows the audit trail of Dracula's coffins from Whitby to Carfax and then out to Bermondsey and Piccadilly. Contents misdescribed as "common earth" when actually "undead-nurturing." What penalty would that attract? Just to lay out the facts; In the novel Dracula arrives on a Russian schooner, the Demeter, which is wrecked on the Whitby shore. The vessel has a small cargo of “wooden boxes filled with mould” which Dracula has consigned to a local solicitor called Billington.  Pre-Brexit, this would have been a simple EU excise move from Bulgaria to the UK, although it would now be a customs arrival from the EU. Either way, there’s a fair degree of misdescription in the papers. When Harker visits Billington’s office in Whitby he sees an invoice for, “fifty cases of common Earth to be used for experimental purposes.”  As we later learn, the eart...