I guess the brutal competition for low fares really opens the door for the taxes. So what you have is airlines competing on price, only to have the REAL fare be twice whatever low price they offer. So the airline's price ceases to matter as much as the external addons. What an irony. So is this another great argument for deregulating airlines? Even Southwest can't escape this phenomenon. They have no control over costs added by outside decisions.

This casts an interesting light on those people who argue that all tax should be on sales, none on income. Types of sales taxes are proliferating. And cuts on income taxes are really part of the cause of these many taxes. The budget shortfalls come from the economic consequences of income tax cuts. So they don't bugger you one way, but in the end (no pun intended) it happens anyway.