New Taxes for Connecticut General Aviation

No Taxation without Representation

Governor’s Bill 6387 would impose a personal property tax on all aircraft based in Connecticut. Currently, aircraft based in the state are required to pay a yearly aircraft registration fee. The proposal would impose a 2% tax on the first 70% of the assessed aircraft value. For example, the owner of a $500,000 aircraft would pay $7,000 per year in property tax, a significant increase over current aircraft registration fees.
Currently, all aircraft repair labor performed in Connecticut is exempt from the 6% state sales tax, but Governor's Bill 1007 would eliminate this exemption for aircraft weighing less than 6,000 pounds. The existing exemption is critical to the success of small to medium sized repair stations in the state.
On Monday, March 7, the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee will hold a public hearing where these bills will be discussed. NBAA has submitted testimony in advance of the hearing opposing these bills, but encourages Members to attend and register their opposition. Details on the hearing are as follows:

• When: Monday, March 7 at 10:30 AM
  (Registration for public comments begins at 8:00 AM)
• Where: Legislative Office Building Room 2E
  (300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT)

To give you a more modest example an $85,000 airplane will have to pay an additional $1190 a year in property tax. That works out to be an extra $100 a month or 20 gallons of fuel at today’s price at Reliant Air or Business Aircraft Center here in Danbury. In our airplane that’s two hours of flying we won’t be doing.

More disturbing than the property tax is the sales tax on labor. Regardless of how much your airplane is worth we all have to have them maintained.  Adding this tax back to aircraft under 6000 pounds may cause some owners to defer necessary maintenance or even fly out of state to save on repairs. The kind folks over at VIP Avionics worked hard to get this repealed when they were losing sales to neighboring states without this burden. In these tough times sending business and jobs out of state seems counterproductive.

I’ll be attending the meeting and in Hartford on Monday and encourage as many of you that can attend to do so. Barring that please if live in Connecticut call your representatives and let them know how these tax increases will impact you.

AOPA and EAA have largely been absent from the stage-defending their membership from these tax hikes.  At least we get a nice magazine from them every month.