Home
»
Trains Magazine
»
Forums
»
Passenger
»
$11 billion later, high speed rail in US drags along

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="aricat"] ...Americans just paid for their airports and .......with taxes. [/quote] As per Page 16 of the FAA's 2012 Fact Book, at the end of FY11, which is the latest year for complete numbers, the United States had 13,450 airports, of which 5,172 were civic public use airports.  Of these 547 or 10.6 per cent had some form of commercial air service. Most airports in the United States are owned by a city, county, regional authority, etc. They are accounted for in an enterprise fund as opposed to being included in the general fund. Enterprise fund accounting is intended public owned activities that are operated like a business. Under enterprise accounting an entity, although it is publicly owned, is expected to cover most of its costs from the users as opposed to the general taxpayers.   Most of the funding for the nation's airports was raised through the sale of municipal bonds. Some of the airports get a small amount of funding through the FAA's Airport Improvement Program, but the percentage of federal funding in relation to the capital budget is relatively small. The interest on municipal bonds is exempt from federal taxes. In addition, if the holder of the bond is a resident of the state issuing the bonds - most airport authorities are created by the state - the interest is exempt from state income taxes. Because municipal bonds are tax exempt, they have a lower effective interest rate than fully taxable bonds, which means the cost of construction is somewhat lower than would be the case if the bonds were fully taxable. The difference between the revenues generated from fully taxable bonds and municipal bonds is absorbed by the taxpayers. Airports recover their costs, including the monies needed to service their bonds, through gate fees, landing fees, FBO rents, parking fees, vendor rents, etc. These are sufficient to cover the costs of most large airports, although there are some rural airport that require taxpayer assistance to cover their revenue shortfalls. In addition to the rents that they pay, most airport vendors, i.e. restaurants, clothing outlets, news stands, bars, etc., pay local, state and federal taxes.  These taxes probably are substantial, and they probably offset most if not all of the difference between the tax revenues generated from tax free financing and fully taxable financing.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag