Taxes set to take off at Kansas City International Airport

Welcome to “Extreme Makeover: Airport Edition.”

Work recently began on a $1.5 billion, four-year renovation at Kansas City International Airport — the city’s largest public infrastructure project to date. The overhaul will add a new single terminal with new restaurants and shops, as well as new roads and a parking garage.

KCI joins a long list of airports, including Chicago’s O’Hare and New York City’s LaGuardia, that have embarked on major renovations in recent years. Salt Lake City International Airport recently started an eye-popping $3.6 billion overhaul.

These transit hubs have plenty of cash to fund the projects. Yet they’re lobbying Congress to raise taxes on airline passengers to raise even more money for infrastructure spending.

Higher taxes would hammer everyone who flies through Kansas City — especially the local business travelers who frequently leave town for sales meetings and conferences.

Right now, there’s a hidden tax on airline tickets called the Passenger Facility Charge or PFC. Congress currently caps the fee at $4.50 per leg of travel — so the PFC adds $18 to a round-trip ticket with layovers each way. The airport lobby has convinced some lawmakers that raising the cap to $8.50 or removing it altogether would be a good idea.

There’s absolutely no need for this tax hike. According to Federal Aviation Administration data, our nation’s airports are collectively sitting on $14.5 billion in cash, or more than a year’s worth of liquid assets. That figure is up 50% from a decade ago.

Airports also have access to a trust fund — worth $7 billion, according to August 2019 projections from the Congressional Budget Office — that the FAA set up explicitly for airport upgrades. And in the last two years, U.S. airports have raised $30 billion in the bond market to pay for renovations.

Airline passengers already pay $6.9 billion a year in airport taxes, according to the trade group Airlines for America. The FAA already gave KCI permission to collect $475 million in PFCs between 2005 and 2020.

Airports will collect even more tax revenue in the coming years as their passenger bases continue to grow. This May, KCI welcomed 1.1 million passengers — up nearly 100,000 from May 2016.

Raising airfare taxes would hit middle-class families and small businesses the hardest. That’s especially true here in the Midwest, where travelers often have to take connecting flights and pay PFCs on each leg.

Switching from a $4.50 tax to an $8.50 tax may not sound like much. But a small business that wants to fly four employees to meet with out-of-state colleagues once a month would face $136 in PFCs for every meeting. For firms with limited resources, that cost adds up.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of Kansas City. The city has an estimated 50,000 of them, 97% of which have fewer than 100 employees. If Congress hikes PFCs, these companies might not be able to afford cross-country trips.

Kansas City International Airport and its peers around the country are flourishing. It would be senseless and unfair to force small businesses and everyday workers to foot even more of the bill for infrastructure upgrades. Let’s hope lawmakers in Washington, D.C., oppose the PFC hike.

Denise Farris is the founder of Farris Law Firm and Perspectives Dispute Resolution in Kansas City. She lives in Stilwell.

This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Taxes set to take off at Kansas City International Airport."