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> Edit: and TSA is funded by airline fees, so not only is it a jobs program, it is paid for by a tax on the wealthy. Even though people who fly are on average
by rangestransform 2y ago
> Edit: and TSA is funded by airline fees, so not only is it a jobs program, it is paid for by a tax on the wealthy.
Even though people who fly are on average richer than people who don't, the vast majority are still normal people who get a W-2, and not Jeff Bezos or a trust fund kid. It's still an incredibly regressive tax because it's a flat per-trip fee rather than a percentage.
- lolinder 2y agoTaxes on groceries are incredibly regressive. The lottery is quite regressive. Taxes on airplane flights can never be more than slightly regressive because the bottom 50% very rarely fly anywhere. A tax on what is fundamentally a luxury service would have to try really hard to be even a little bit regressive.
- rangestransform 2y agoThe fact that my CEO in first class and me in economy class pay the same flat fee is still regressive, just not as regressive as, eg. taxing food twice the normal rate
- lolinder 2y agoYou said "incredibly regressive", which is what I disagree with. It's at best slightly regressive—the fee is $5.60, so it's not like it's substantially raising the price of a ticket for someone who can already afford one in the first place. And the fee does scale with income to a small degree in that the higher your income the more frequent your flights tend to be. Could it be a percentage of the ticket price? Possibly, though I'm not sure that would elicit fewer complaints. But it's already in the bottom quartile of regressiveness in how we do taxes in this country, so calling it "incredibly regressive" is either a clear exaggeration or a sign that you have no idea how bad the tax situation is here.