Non-refundable tickets

Question.. I thought I read someplace that even on non-refundable airline tickets, they have to give you back the extra taxes and fees should you not be able to use the tickets. I searched around the net and can't find any info on this. Does anyone know if that's true? I notice on lots of tickets the taxes/fees are more than the fare so that would be reassuring to think you could recover some of your expense if you needed to. I have to book tickets well in advance, and always worry about the unknown.

Looks like it depends on the airline, ie if it's a budget airline like Ryanair you're going to have a difficult battle getting it back.  Also, there appears to be fees the airlines are trying to charge for the privilege of getting the money back.  http://money.guardian.co.uk/consumernews/story/0,,2041348,00.html
Have you tried through the website or phoning them up to see what their policy is?

Thanks Matt for your reply. I am flying with BMI and by the looks of the article you linked, they do refund taxes. I don't forsee a problem so went ahead and booked the flights, but it is nice to know if something happens I can recover some of the tax. The taxes were way more than the tickets. The BMI website simply said if you have a non-refundable ticket you haven't been able to use to contact your travel issuer. Thanks again for your help!