WASHINGTON, D.C. — The General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) announced support for the comprise tax agreement working its way through Congress after the aviation groups participated in a telephone conference with the White House.
GAMA’s President and CEO Pete Bunce said, “We support this agreement because it contains two provisions that will create needed growth in general aviation manufacturing.” Bunce added the association “believes the expensing provision will encourage sales of airplanes, engines and avionics in a market that continues to experience a very slow recovery from the recession.” The proposals also permit business to extend research and development tax credits.
NBAA’s President and CEO Ed Bolen welcomed the tax proposals, citing the 100% expensing of investments in capital assets through the year 2011, allowing businesses to immediately gain the benefits of business aircraft. The association, he said, “will continue working to underscore the importance of initiatives like the one outlined by the White House, which will preserve business aviation manufacturing jobs while giving companies access to the efficiency, productivity, competitive and other benefits that come with the use of an aircraft.”
The two associations were briefed Tuesday, Dec. 7, on the tax compromise in a telephone conference initiated by White House senior staff members to outline the compromise legislation worked out between the President and the Republican leaders in Congress.
Americans have been lead to believe that this agreement was all about keeping the current tax rates as they are at the end of the year. More and more we learn that it is full of pork, and that’s what these tax credits represent, despite their being targeting at General Aviation. They are just a finger in the dike to a much larger problem of over-taxation and over-regulation of nearly every aspect of our personal and business lives. But since lobbies such as the NBAA and GAMA exist to bring goodies home to their constituents, one can not fault Mr. Bunce and Mr. Bolen for doing their jobs as well-paid sugar daddies. Now we see the “deal” as it was probably always intended – pork barrel spending at its worst, more ethanol subsidies, a return of the despised Death Tax, and all sorts of special favors for this group or that in the government’s continued practice of choosing winners and losers, a job better done by free markets. The Tea Party and the FairTax would end all of this nonsense, but it would also likely make the lobbying arm of the alphabets irrelevant.