WSJ 10/5: "Tax the Airlines"

[BoilerUP]

Your company is already seeing the benefits, they just are not paying for them right now. So your company will finally be required to contribute money toward the ATC system that makes their business possible in the first place.

Actually, my company pays $0.219/gal in federal excise tax, compared to airlines $0.044/gal. Of course, airline PASSENGERS pay ticket taxes...not airlines themselves.

Look at the ATC system in this country...it is designed around traffic, and airline users are by a wide margin drivers of traffic. The primary user will see the primary benefit of advanced ATC and should have no problem paying the primary share.

Besides, airlines don't pay any special taxes for the ATC system - their passengers do, in the form of passed-through ticket taxes.

 

[glasspilot]

User fees are a complicated issue. General aviation is definitely a luxury. Should all tax payers subsidize the services it receives?

GA is a luxury? A pilot just posted that? So that implies that Airline are not a luxury. So tell me Einstein, how are we supposed to get our "Essential Airline" pilots if all the "Luxury" planes in your profile are taxed right out of the sky?

Flying a plane is a Luxury just like driving a car is. It's a mode of transportation and there are crap cars and planes and luxury cars and planes. There are airlines and busses and sports cars and personal jets.

And I can't believe I have to explain this to a pilot! There is no reason a brand new Cessna 172 should cost one penny more than a brand new Ford Tarus. NOT ONE! Look at them. There's more material in the FORD. The plane costs more ( by a factor of 7 ) because of lawyers. And the fact the planes are so expensive makes those that can now afford to do it wealthy, so now the masses see those who fly as "rich" and want to go after them for budget shortfalls and you are right there moving that agenda with your "flying is a luxury BS"!!

Again, I can't believe I'm explaining this to a pilot!!!

 

[ttflyer]

Are you saying that you would be ok with doubling or tripling the fuel tax?

As opposed to user fees? You betcha. The user fee idea makes a bad idea feel good about itself. Giant bureaucracy for minimal revenue - Stupid does not even get close to describing it...

User fees are a complicated issue. General aviation is definitely a luxury. Should all tax payers subsidize the services it receives?

Complicated - yes. Have you heard of the "Aviation Trust Fund"? There is a giant SURPLUS of funds in the trust fund, but our stupid government won't spend the money on aviation because it would go against the deficit. In other words, if they spend the money they already raised from our fuel taxes on aviation, they couldn't spend as much on welfare or some other pet project. That means rather then using our tax money for buying votes, they would be using it as it was intended to be used - for AVIATION - but they won't do it.

Should the construction worker who swings a hammer and who's only exposure to aviation is a once every two year flight to Vegas have his taxes go to the airport and atc services that serve a private jets flight?

Should he pay for the interstate highway system on the other side of the country from where he lives? He does. Does he benefit from that highway system? Probably. Does he benefit from our air transportation system? Probably. Does it matter? No. There are 300 million people in the US. We can't tax them individually based on their personal "benefit" from each service. We all benefit from all these services. If you want see a place that doesn't, take a look at Africa. Is that the model you are going for?

 

[CesnaCaptn]

GA is a luxury? A pilot just posted that? So that implies that Airline are not a luxury. So tell me Einstein, how are we supposed to get our "Essential Airline" pilots if all the "Luxury" planes in your profile are taxed right out of the sky?

Fine, GA has become a luxury. You even write it yourself.

How would we get our "Essential Airline" pilots? Maybe we would get them the same way other countries do--from collegiate or ab initio programs that are sponsored directly by the airlines. Taxes aren't the only reason flight training has become prohibitively expensive. The way I understand it, piston planes won't have to pay this fee. I don't think AOPA would let it happen. If the $100 per flight affects piston planes, then that segment of aviation is DOA.

$100 a flight would not have grounded the owner of the Citation X I flew. That guys was just pissing away his money.

Flying a plane is a Luxury just like driving a car is. It's a mode of transportation and there are crap cars and planes and luxury cars and planes. There are airlines and busses and sports cars and personal jets.

And I can't believe I have to explain this to a pilot! There is no reason a brand new Cessna 172 should cost one penny more than a brand new Ford Tarus. NOT ONE! Look at them. There's more material in the FORD. The plane costs more ( by a factor of 7 ) because of lawyers. And the fact the planes are so expensive makes those that can now afford to do it wealthy, so now the masses see those who fly as "rich" and want to go after them for budget shortfalls and you are right there moving that agenda with your "flying is a luxury BS"!!

Again, I can't believe I'm explaining this to a pilot!!!

You think Cessnas cost more than Fords because of lawyers? I don't even know where to start, but I can guarantee you that's not the only reason. Your trying to say that a Cessna and a Ford use the same amount of material, so they should cost the same? Using that logic, Ferraris should cost half as much as SUVs.

 

[CesnaCaptn]

Should he pay for the interstate highway system on the other side of the country from where he lives? He does. Does he benefit from that highway system? Probably. Does he benefit from our air transportation system? Probably. Does it matter? No. There are 300 million people in the US. We can't tax them individually based on their personal "benefit" from each service. We all benefit from all these services. If you want see a place that doesn't, take a look at Africa. Is that the model you are going for?

Since we have a progressive tax system, there's no way we could have people only pay for the services they use.

I'm not going for the Africa model, but the Tea Party is. No taxes and no governments? That sounds a lot like Africa to me.

 

[ttflyer]

$100 a flight would not have grounded the owner of the Citation X I flew. That guys was just pissing away his money.

You're stuck on the amount. I agree $100 is not going to affect the typical Citation X owner. The problem is how the fee is collected. User fees are a bad idea. Period. They require a whole new layer of bureaucracy. And if you think that new bureaucracy is going to be good for your airline career, you're kidding yourself. There is already a mechanism in place to collect fuel taxes. If they need to raise taxes, they need to raise fuel taxes, not kill the industry with user fees.

 

[pilotyip]

Since we have a progressive tax system, there's no way we could have people only pay for the services they use.

I'm not going for the Africa model, but the Tea Party is. No taxes and no governments? That sounds a lot like Africa to me.

You know that is not the Tea Party platform. We need taxes for infrastructure, defense, FAA, and other gov’t agencies. What we don’t need to new taxes to support a broken system of wealth transfer. We don’t need an anti-business, anti-success atmosphere in DC. When you remove the ability to fail, you remove the incentive to succeed.

 

[ttflyer]

The way I understand it, piston planes won't have to pay this fee. I don't think AOPA would let it happen. If the $100 per flight affects piston planes, then that segment of aviation is DOA.

They "Jobs Bill" is so vague it could mean anything. I personlly don't want to bet that the government will not screw up and destroy our industry even if they do it accidently. None of them know the first thing about the aviation industry.

And AOPA?? Really?? We're talking about presidential re-election politics here. Any pawn that needs to be sacrificed in that game will be and AOPA won't be able to do a thing about it...

 

[Smarta$$]

What is the tax on Jet A for if not ATC?

Clearly doesn't cover all the costs. I guess you want the income tax payers to cover the difference, or put it on the national Visa?

 

[Penguin46]

Flight info = brain dead sheep forum

Surely some savings could be found with TSA, but he article says that the airlines/passengers are only paying half of what aviation security costs are. Should the national debt/deficit pay the rest? The costs have to be covered to the extent they can't be minimized. Right now they are just going on the national credit card.

As said before, but knee-jerk dismissed by the brain dead sheep, if airlines can raise billions in profits for bag fees, they can raise a fraction of that amount to cover the security expenses that allow their existence.

Brain dead sheep - how descriptively accurate. A good name for this forum or maybe a rock band.