Florida Starting to Get the Message About Unfair Use Tax

AOPA reported recently that the Governor of Florida,Charlie Crist, answered a letter from AOPA President Phil Boyer about the unreasonable imposition of use tax. Although it's heartening to see that Florida is listening, Crist's response shows that Florida still has a long way to go.

In his letter of "clarification," Crist claims that Florida doesn't and won't use fly-ins such as Sun n Fun next week as an excuse to hit a bunch of people with taxes. The same letter, however, goes on to explain that Florida will unabashedly tax anyone who brings a plane into the state for "training, repair, customization or business." That's a pretty broad coverage and I still wouldn't fly my plane to Sun n Fun until Florida gives more clarification.

It also appears that Governor Crist is saying the state won't attack out-of-state tourists who are just visiting, but they will attack anyone pursuing training, repair, customization or business in Florida. How could a Governor think it's a good idea to cripple nearly every flight training operation, mechanic shop and business dealing with out of state commuters in his state? Clearly, Florida has a long way to go before their tax policies will even begin to make sense. If I didn't know better, I'd think the Florida legislators hated everyone involved with aviation...Florida citizens and otherwise. Thankfully, they are at least listening to organizations like AOPA and I have faith that Florida will write their laws to help aviation and their own citizens.