‘We all chip in’: America’s $40 billion private jet boom is taking off, and taxpayers are helping billionaires foot the bill

Getting a cheap ticket somewhere is as welcome a surprise as anything. There are whole forums devoted to award travel, entire companies and platforms searching for cheap flights, and shoestring travelers looking for the biggest bang for their buck. Whatever the price of the ticket, there’s one thing that’s for sure: taxes. Every time a traveler buys a plane ticket, 7.5% of the fare goes to the federal government. But those rich enough to zip through the skies in private jets aren’t subject to the same ticket tax. 

That difference is one piece of what the Institute for Policy Studies called a “taxpayer subsidy” for private aviation in a September report. Noncommercial private jets account for about 7% of flights handled by the Federal Aviation Administration, but contribute just 0.6% of the taxes flowing into the fund that helps finance it, according to the Department of Transportation.

The private-jet class benefiting from this arrangement—which IPS estimates is 256,000 people, or just 0.003% of the global population—holds $31 trillion in wealth. IPS said they benefit in three ways: tax breaks on qualifying aircraft purchases, publicly-funded airport infrastructure, and an aviation-tax system in which private jets contribute far less than commercial travelers relative to their share of flights.

“Those are the menu of ways in which we all chip in for private jet travel,” Chuck Collins, coauthor of the report and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, told Fortune. “We all subsidize this tiny segment of the ultra rich and their transportation.”

Private jets worth tens of millions bring in millions in tax breaks

Business is booming for private jets, with global sales reaching $40.3 billion in 2025,........

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