Sponsor
David Scott
Representative · D-GA
Representative · D-GA
The bill lets certain localities continue to treat aviation-related sales taxes as general local revenue—giving those governments budgeting flexibility and revenue continuity—at the cost of reducing dedicated funding for some airports, creating uneven treatment across airports, and lowering transparency for taxpayers.
Local governments in jurisdictions with longstanding sales taxes can keep using aviation-related sales-tax revenue for general local purposes instead of being constrained to airport-only uses, preserving local budget stability and revenue continuity.
Large-hub airport jurisdictions and their taxpayers face fewer federal constraints on how surrounding local sales-tax revenue is allocated, simplifying local budgeting and infrastructure decisions.
Localities with pre-December 9, 2014 sales taxes retain federal recognition of their historical taxing arrangements, maintaining federal flexibility that protects continuity of funds for local services.
Airport sponsors and airport users could lose a source of funds for operations and capital improvements if local sales-tax revenues are redirected away from airport use, reducing available airport funding.
Smaller airports and airports outside the specified large-hub jurisdictions gain no similar flexibility and may face comparatively tighter restrictions, creating inequitable funding outcomes across airports.
Taxpayers in affected localities may see aviation-related sales-tax revenue redirected to other local spending, reducing transparency about how aviation taxes are used and making it harder to trace aviation fees to airport benefits.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Exempts certain broadly applicable local sales-tax revenues from federal airport revenue-use and written-assurance restrictions for qualifying jurisdictions with very large hub airports.
Official title: To amend title 49, United States Code, to clarify airport revenue use of local general sales taxes, and for other purposes.
Introduced December 11, 2025 by David Scott · Last progress December 11, 2025
Removes federal restrictions that limit how airport-related revenues may be used for certain local general sales tax receipts. Specifically, it lets revenues from broadly applied local sales taxes — in places that had such a tax in place before December 9, 2014, that do not sponsor a public airport, and that contain a very large hub airport (over 35 million enplanements in 2021) — avoid the usual federal airport revenue-use and written-assurance limits. This change eases how those local sales-tax proceeds can be spent in qualifying jurisdictions.