Fighting air congestion
This is
While Congress and the entire U.S. aviation industry are moving ahead to fund modernization of the air traffic country system, the Rocky Mountain News has taken a flying leap backwards in support of the FAA’s own widely discredited proposal. ("The right way to fight air congestion", September 29).
There are many good reasons why the FAA’s funding plan has, as the newspaper’s editorial states, “languished” since its introduction in March. One of the biggest is that it will not raise as much money as the tax-based system approved by committees in both the House and Senate.
The FAA’s plan is just another tax break for the airlines, which have received billions in taxpayer-funded tax breaks and bailouts in the last decade. The agency has admitted its own plan would raise $600 million less than the current system of ticket and fuel taxes.
The House and the Senate recognized the shortcomings of the FAA plan and wrote their own proposals that contain modest fuel tax increases for general aviation while leaving the taxes paid by airlines and their passengers alone. And they do it without imposing a radical new funding system that would require an expensive, cumbersome new federal bureaucracy to collect the fees.
Pay-at-the-pump fuel taxes are the fairest and most efficient funding mechanism and general aviation pilots support reasonable tax increases to pay for a modern ATC system. We oppose airline tax breaks, new user fee collection bureaucracies and decreased funding for the world’s largest and safest air transportation system.
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Ummmmm, Airlines don't pay taxes.... Matter of fact, no corporations pay taxes..... Interesting concept, no?
You see, corporations cannot print money. So, therefore, they have to get money from somewhere else. That's where you step in. Any tax increase you can mention starts with your pocketbook.
However, I do agree that the fairest way to collect the taxes is on the user at the ticket level. They should print the tax right on the ticket. Let people see how they are taxed.
Posted by Dravur on October 15, 2007 10:30 PM