Last week President Obama touched off a new series of high-level flame wars with aviation industry leaders by calling for new taxes on bizjet owners while at the same time seeming again to call into question the legitimacy of bizjet use. In remarks during a press conference on June 29, the president focused on the need to eliminate tax breaks, referring specifically on more than one occasion to accelerated depreciation, a tax incentive that the administration embraced as part of its stimulus package in 2009. The speech came as a broader national debate on debt, revenue and taxes heats up this summer. ** **
Obama outlined the proposal as a tough choice to cut tax breaks but lumped together hedge fund managers and bizjets owners to make his point: “There’s been a lot of discussion about revenues and raising taxes in recent weeks,” the president said, “so I want to be clear about what we’re proposing here. I spent the last two years cutting taxes for ordinary Americans, and I want to extend those middle-class tax cuts. The tax cuts I’m proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners.”
