The result is that airline passengers are subsidizing some of the world’s largest corporations and wealthiest people under the current system, said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
“Pretty clearly, we all feel the pain every time we buy an airline ticket and see how big a share of the costs those fees are,” Gardner said.
Bloomberg calculated the difference between airline and private-jet taxes on 10 domestic routes, ranging from 2,500 to 340 miles on a variety of typical aircraft. While the taxes can vary significantly due to many factors, there were sharp disparities in all of the examples. On average, private flights generated only about 7 percent of comparable airline taxes in the examples. Read more
