Bill Seeks Raise Business Jet Fuel Tax by Almost 9x
OK... take a DEEP breath before you read this one... U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts), a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez (New York, 7th District) announced that they’d introduced a bill titled The Fueling Alternative Transportation with a Carbon Aviation Tax (FATCAT) Act.
In addition to increasing the fuel taxes currently paid by owners and operators of business jets from $0.22 to a staggering $1.95-per-gallon, subject legislation, if ratified, will eliminate extant fuel tax exemptions for logging and petroleum exploration, thereby disincentivizing such endeavors—the whole of which remain essential to the existence of human societies, to include the world’s farming, manufacturing, transport, healthcare, construction, technology, defense, and orbital sectors.
The amount of the proposed tax-increase isn’t arbitrary. In point of fact, the value equals, more or less, a $200-per-metric-ton penalty on business jet CO2 emissions.
Markey and Velázquez call for tax revenue generated by the FATCAT Act—a glibly-asinine appellation—to be transferred to the Airport & Airway Trust Fund and a newly created federal “Clean Communities Trust Fund to support air monitoring for environmental justice communities and long-term investments in clean, affordable public transportation across the country.” The aforementioned constitute nebulous allocations of ill-gotten tax-dollars and raise worrying questions vis-à-vis the types and numbers of machines, structures, goods, services, and behaviors a perilously indebted federal government might subsequently tax.
Markey’s website—a monument-to-rhetoric fashioned artfully into self-aggrandizement—apocryphally sets forth: “Private air travel is the most energy-intense form of travel.”
Markey himself alleged: “The one-percent can’t free ride on our environment and our infrastructure at a discount. Billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are getting a bargain, paying less in taxes each year to fly private and contribute more pollution than millions of drivers combined on the roads below. It’s time to ground these fat cats and make them pay their fair share so that we can invest in building public transportation that communities across the country and our economy desperately need.”
Here are some alternate facts... In 2022, Gulfstream G650ER owner Elon Musk paid an eye-watering $11-billion in federal income tax. Musk and his fellow one-percenters hand 40.8-percent of their annual income over to the U.S. federal government.
In 2020, the bottom half of U.S. taxpayers earned 10.2 percent of the nation’s total Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) and paid 2.3-percent of all federal individual income taxes collected. Conversely, the top one-percent earned 22.2-percent of total AGI and paid a hefty 42.3-percent of all federal income taxes. Markey, Velázquez, and their democrat colleagues cannot abide the broad dissemination of such data. They work diligently to create outrage for the purpose of ensuring votes are predicated wholly upon feelings, not facts.
Notwithstanding the antecedent and verifiable tax statistics, Congresswoman Velázquez asserted: “Working families shouldn't subsidize the ultra-wealthy to fly private and destroy our environment. If billionaires want to travel on private jets, they should pay similar taxes to those flying commercial. It's time for the rich to pay for their pollution so we can fund environmental justice initiatives and affordable public transportation across the country.”
Velázquez, Markey, and their ilk are neither equivocating nor stretching the truth; they’re simply not telling the truth—propagating egregious falsehoods in pursuit of even greater tax monies with which to fund current agendas.
David Kass, Executive Director of Americans for Tax Fairness—a consortium of some 420 national, state, and local entities enthusiastically supported by a large number of left-leaning organizations—proclaimed: “Our upside-down tax system has given preference to the wealthiest for too long. If the wealthiest were paying their fair share in federal taxes, there would be more revenue entering the system to fund services and programs that we all rely on, including ensuring that we have clean air and safe drinking water. An Increase in Excise Tax for Fuel Use by Private Jets begins to right this system, taxing a luxury item that the richest use.”
The average block fuel intensity of new turbine aircraft—commercial and private alike—decreased 41-percent from 1970 to 2019, a compound annual reduction rate of one-percent. The past decade has seen even greater reductions in turbine-engine fuel-burns as aircraft and powerplant manufacturers collaborate to reduce emissions and fuel consumption through the industry-wide adoption of new technologies; lighter, stronger materials; and slipperier aerodynamic designs. Pratt & Whitney is currently partaking in the Double-Bubble/D8 experiment, which involves relocating aero-engines atop the wings of conventional aircraft and positioning them farther aft—thereby dramatically reducing drag and noise and increasing fuel-efficiency.
Markey’s and Velázquez FATCAT Act is cosponsored by Senators Elizabeth Warren (Democrat, Massachusetts) and Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat, Rhode Island).
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