Republicans heading into the midterm elections have plenty worth defending. They should not defend a private jet tax carve-out tucked into the aviation safety legislation written after 67 people died in the collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Black Hawk. A safety bill should be about safety, not a back-door tax benefit for private aircraft owners.
The provision is the Pilot and Aircraft Privacy Act (also known as PAPA), carried into the House ALERT Act in Section 105. It would bar states, localities, and airports from using ADS-B, the location signal aircraft already broadcast publicly, to assess or collect taxes and fees on private planes.
The privacy rationale behind the provision is thin. Section 105 would wall off a public signal from exactly one class of user, the offices that assess taxes. And it does not repeal a single tax. It shields against tax evasion already on the books. Revenue departments and county assessors use ADS-B to locate aircraft registered in one state and hangared in another. Take that tool away, and the dodge becomes undetectable. The obligation remains. The bill stops coming. For an owner who would rather not pay, that is better than repeal, and it requires no vote to eliminate the tax itself.
The way this provision traveled makes it worse. The ALERT Act was written to implement the National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendations following the January 2025 midair collision over the Potomac, and the House passed it 396-10. PAPA was added days before markup, without a hearing and without a vote of its own. It appears nowhere in the NTSB’s recommendations. Three amendments to strip or narrow it were offered in committee, and all three were defeated.
New YouGov polling conducted for Consumer Action for a Strong Economy measured the impact of voters learning what this bill actually does. If a Republican member votes to keep the provision, 58% of voters say they would think less of that member, with 38% percent much less. Only 7% would think more. Republican voters return the same verdict — 43% would view their own member less favorably. This is not a base-mobilizing vote but a political liability, and almost no one rewards a lawmaker for defending it.
The money does not disappear when a jet owner stops paying it. A locality that loses aircraft tax revenue still has to fund the sheriff’s department and repave the roads, and in many states, the largest share of it goes to public schools. In a letter to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Alabama’s Department of Revenue projected losses exceeding $18 million annually there alone, and more than a dozen states face comparable exposure. In practical terms, a member who votes for Section 105 is voting to shift costs onto the family down the street, through higher property taxes, higher local fees, or fewer local services.
Seventy-seven percent of voters said giving a tax break to jet owners while middle-class families pay in full is fundamentally unfair, including 67% of Republicans and 75% of independents. That is how this will be described in October, and the description will be accurate.
Eighty-four percent of voters, including 76% of Republicans, understood it is wrong to bury a tax break for the wealthy inside a safety bill honoring crash victims. Once voters hear both sides, barely a quarter still want the provision kept in the bill, and nearly twice as many want it taken out.
Supporters of the provision have a warning of their own. They say pilots might switch off their tracking equipment to avoid a tax bill, which would make flying less safe. Consider what that argument concedes. It asks Congress to accept that some aircraft owners would break federal law and fly dark rather than pay what they owe, and to head that off by excusing the tax instead of enforcing it. Owners with real privacy concerns already have options through the FAA and have had for years. None of this is about punishing aviation. It is about whether one industry gets to write its own tax break into a bill Congress has to pass.
Conservatives have every reason to strip this. It is a federal statute telling states and counties which of their own taxes they may collect, and it is not a tax cut. No rates fall, and no liabilities disappear — the bill simply shifts to whoever is easiest to collect from. Republicans have spent two years telling voters they understand what groceries, rent, and insurance cost. Voters who are that stretched will not accept that the answer to affordability is a smaller tax bill for people who own airplanes.
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Senate Republicans already have the better model. The ROTOR Act, introduced by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), passed unanimously in December 2025 without this language. As Congress reconciles the House ALERT Act with the Senate ROTOR Act, Republicans should insist on the Senate position, remove Section 105, and send the president a clean safety bill. If aircraft owner groups believe PAPA deserves to become law, they can bring it forward on its own, in the open, with a recorded vote.
Sixty-seven families have waited 19 months for Congress to finish this. Strip Section 105, pass the safety bill, and give the families the law they were promised.
Gerard Scimeca is chairman of Consumer Action for a Strong Economy.