There’s a new way that ADS-B is being used to collect money from aircraft operators and this one might take more than a Congressional lobbying effort to make go away. Los Angeles County assessor Jeff Prang told Fox News that in California aircraft valued at more than $100,000 are subject to property tax when they’re in the state and he’s using ADS-B to determine when they’re in his jurisdiction so he can levy the property tax. He’s identified more than 1,000 aircraft worth $4 billion that represent a potential tax haul of $40 million. “If you have an aircraft and it’s here in L.A. County then it’s assessable for the period of time it’s in the county,” he said. That’s just L.A. County. Presumably every other county in the country’s most populous state could do the same.
Aircraft are taxed at 1.0-1.2 percent of their assessed value while they’re in the state. It doesn’t matter to the state where the aircraft is registered. If it’s parked in the state, it’s subject to the tax. Like most taxes, it’s self reported by the aircraft owner but ADS-B offers a way for Prang and his colleagues across the state to check on those returns. Aircraft undergoing service and repair are exempt as are historically significant aircraft.
A years-long lobbying effort by aviation groups has Congress potentially limiting the use of ADS-B data to collect airport fees. The measure in the ALERT Act also limits the use of funds collected through landing and other fees to airside improvements at the airport collecting the fees. The ALERT Act measure would theoretically apply to the California tax assessments but it would be a complicated political move to essentially deny a state access to those funds through federal legislation. It’s not clear whether other California jurisdictions have caught on to Prang’s outside-the-box thinking or if other states are doing the same.
AOPA, which has been lobbying hard to eliminate the use of ADS-B for billing purposes said California should have a look at its own policies before widening the tax collection net “Fox News was spot on pointing out that ADS-B is an aviation safety tool mandated by the federal government to help avoid mid-air collisions,” said Jim Coon, AOPA’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. “And it is even more clear now that rather than tracking and invading one’s privacy by demanding the use of aviation safety technology to collect more money, state and local tax collectors should examine whether existing tax structures and property-tax requirements are fair, efficient, and appropriately designed.”
The original L.A. County news release is below.
How the heck does California have the authority to lay a property tax on a visiting vehicle? Does his county use license plate readers to lay a tax on every out of state visitor who dares drive on one of their roads? What’s next, tax bills for merely flying over?
I’ve been planning to take a long flight around the country, including several stops in California. But if this is how they’re going to treat visitors who have come to spend tourism dollars, maybe we’ll just bypass the state and take our business elsewhere. I’m paying enough in property taxes at home already.
Without wanting to comment on the right or wrong of property taxes generally, this is not aimed at visitors. It is aimed at aircraft that are trying to avoid the local tax by being registered elsewhere, but are “habitually” kept in California. In your case, ADS-B data is your friend, not the problem. If challenged you can easily prove that you are a legitimate visitor to the state – you flew in, and you flew back out again.
“If you have an aircraft and it’s here in L.A. County then it’s assessable for the period of time it’s in the county,” Los Angeles County tax assessor Geoffrey Prang said.
That sounds to me like it’s not just for aircraft “habitually kept in CA”.
You can be sure it will not be just aircraft. Consider a J3 on amphib floats today is a $140,000 airplane. Even my vintage Cessna that’s older than old is worth more than $100k. I’d be very circumspect about bringing a boat into an LA marina for resupply for its next passage. Or for that matter, even a high end Tesla.
I wouldn’t be sure of this since I live in California. It will find ways to tax you.
We had our plane in SoCal for mx, there was a long delay for parts, and now we are being taxed as if we live there. We don’t. And we’ll take our plane to a different state for our next annual.
According to Russ’s srticle; “Aircraft undergoing service and repair are exempt”
I have spoken to the Assessor’s office. I was told, without evidence, that I must have business in LA County for the plane to be there that long, (6 weeks).
What next, taxing the content of your suitcase when you land at LAX on a commercial flight?
Pretty sure the simplest approach would be to remove the requirement to broadcast tail numbers along with passing actual privacy legislation blocking building collections of identifying info on people like advertisers do.
I don’t think they are using ADS-B data to find tail numbers. The airplanes in question are parked right there on the ramp. They are using the overall flight data to demonstrate that an aircraft was not “just visiting”, but was routinely based there.
Minor quibble that they may be squirreled away in a hangar aside, I couldn’t find any details about this not applying to actual visitors and transient planes. I’ve had to deal with enough podunk tax bills traveling for work that I’d not assumed that it would have that sensible of targeting.
Though I’ll note again that not requiring broadcasting tail numbers would reduce the non-safety use of adsb data anyway along with banning data aggregators.
200% Agree! …BUT …don’t ‘Hold-Your-Breath’!
Crazy. But most states are. If this stands then GA was sold a bill of goods. ADS-B was sold as a safety system, PURE AND SIMPLE. It’s not there for government agencies to generate revenue.
additionally, as others have pointed out, what’s next? Taxing your car as you drive through? Does LA county tax airliners parked at LAX?
Most states that have personal property tax base it on the aircraft actually being based there. LA County, and CA by extension should do the same
ADSB turns a busy four-way stop-sign intersection into a 4-way stop-light intersection. It has had no statistical impact on the half-dozen mid-air collisions which occured both before and now after the mandate. Oshkosh 2026 is a great example of how unlikely it is to have a midair, even when hundreds of airplanes are pushed into a small space with 0 visibility (as pilots westbound in the afternoon smoke discovered).
So, yes, you were always sold a false bill of goods. Read the original NPRM and you’ll see that the overall intent of ADSB is to handle more traffic at large airports, and that traffic is overwhelmingly **commercial**.
So ADSB was sold to you as safety, which it never could deliver on, but in reality it just offloaded a tremendous financial equipping burden from the airlines to us, the GA pilots.
Besides the advertised “Free Flight” energy optimized flight paths (aka VFR to many of us) a major ADS-B driver was cost shifting/reduction for FAA. DoD provided GPS signal at no direct cost. Owner/operators provided “Out” signal. Terrestrial radars and navaids could be decommissioned at huge savings (remotely located and maint intensive radars) to be replaced by simpler repeater/receiver sites. Then as it often does, the “real world” intruded…runways are the system thru-put limiters, optimized implies varying flt paths which tick off additional homeowners (anyone want to wade thru defending new runways/sound footprints?), 9-11 showed that terrorists would not participate so skin paint capability was still necessary for at least national defense…and hackers had a new target, so some subset of navaids will continue.
Show us the data. Personal experience using ADSB proves otherwise, and there’s no way to collect that data.
I’m not sure how personal experience can prove anything, and it seems the downvoters agree.
Quick thought experiment: if you drive a car on a backroad, you routinely get to within 1m of another car, going the opposite direction, at a speed which would cause instant death with the slightest miscalculation. Is the claim that these are all near-death experiences, and only ADSB protects you from this? Because if so, I think there is a significant misunderstanding of what possible with ADSB’s 1Hz data rate and limited packet information. Imagine driving a car where you get to open your eyes just once per second, and give a thought to how comfortable you’d feel trying to avoid other drivers who also only got to open their eyes once per second.
So you may feel however you wish about that, but I think most would agree that it’s not ADSB that is protecting us. It’s our Mk1 eyeballs. And it’s not just our personal experience, it’s decades of excellent NTSB data showing that midair collisions are and have always been vanishingly rare. Around a half dozen per yetr.
Out of the >20million flights per year, the *best* that ADSB could do, in a perfect world, is save a half dozen midairs. That’s the data.
Contrast that to the most important things that *do* kill pilots: maintenance and proficiency. How many lives could have been saved with the money GA spent on the ADSB mandate, had it been mandated to maintenance and proficiency? For $5-10k per plane, every US owner could have gotten a tailwheel endorsement to learn stick and rudder, a glider’s license to master energy management, and *still* have had money left over to pay the mechanic for an extra thorough annual.
We’ll never know how many lives that could have saved, but that’s the hard data. We were marketed ADSB as a life-saving tool, but it can’t deliver on collision avoidance. And the FAA warns people not to trust NEXRAD for real-time weather avoidance. So what does it do for us?
No wonder why pilots are getting annoyed that about all it demonstrably does is track us for payment purposes.
It’s not complicated if you are a frequent user of ADSB-IN traffic. I have more than one occasion where the. Mark I eyeball didn’t detect the traffic when ADSB did, potentially precluding a conflict. And I’m not alone, many pilots I know have said the same thing and find the technology to be a step change improvement in safety. Enough said
Yeah, we’re going around in circles here. I’m glad you feel more comfortable with ADSB, but what does that have to do with whether it delivers on the marketing?
True safety is borne out in the numbers, and those numbers are unequivocal: mid-air collisions are responsible for a vanishingly small number of accidents and so ADSB just can’t make a major impact in what kills pilots. So we’re getting increasingly upset as we learn that the value we were promised *cannot* be delivered, and instead the huge equipment investment we made is being used against us.
200% Agree! More-than-likely being utilized exactly as was (actually) intended …a ‘Bait-and-Switch’.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile!
CA has a history of collecting dubious taxes. In the 80’s/90’s they decided to go after military retirement pro-rated by years a person was a CA resident while serving in CA…even if they retired to a different state and were no longer CA residents…other states then decided it was a good idea and piled on.
Took about 10 years for the courts to toss, but the lawyers made bank…given history, stby for similar collection efforts elsewhere.
…my tin-hat cynicism was questioned when I was uneasy about (now validated), potential tracking abuses and opted to keep non-ES xpdr and go UAT for ADS-B out. Within legal settings, 1200 squawk in UAT can show up as generic 1200 tgt in system…not 100%, but less convenient for abusers.
Here is a link to the Los Angeles County Assessor’s original press release describing this. As I read it, he describes the intent as identifying aircraft that are primarily located and operated (in LA County), but he does not mention how that is defined.
https://lacounty.gov/2026/03/16/new-software-snares-aircrafts-assessments-adding-millions-to-public-funds/
“but he does not mention how that is defined.”
In other words, it sounds like he’s intentionally keeping it vague to claim whatever aircraft they want to tax is “primarily located and operated in LA County”.
Now that is an interesting AI slop image
…or when in Rome…”thank you for your notification of billing via ADS-B Out for Nxxxx. As a non-ATC, non-exempted user, please forward your $1500 installation/maintenance cost recovery fee to the following address…”
Thank you for your coverage of this issue. I’d like to offer a few points of clarification and context.
First, I am the Los Angeles County Assessor—not the “Tax Assessor.” My office does not collect taxes. We are property appraisers, and our responsibility is to identify taxable property and determine its assessed value as required by California law.
California law requires assessors to account for all taxable property, including aircraft, both commercial and general aviation aircraft. Our goal is straightforward: to ensure that aircraft owners who keep their aircraft in Los Angeles County are assessed fairly and consistently, just like every other property owner.
Unfortunately, some aircraft owners go to considerable lengths to obscure where their aircraft are actually based in order to avoid assessment. New technology and available data have given us better tools to identify aircraft that may previously have escaped assessment.
It is also important to emphasize that simply flying into Los Angeles County does not make an aircraft subject to property tax here. Assessors use established legal standards and methodologies to determine where an aircraft is habitually situated and whether it has sufficient taxable presence in California. (See CA State Board of Equalization, Assessors’ Handbook, Section 577), Aircraft that merely visit or fly through the county generally would not be subject to assessment here.
Whether aircraft should be subject to property taxation is a policy question for the Legislature. As Assessor, I don’t make the law; I have a legal obligation to administer it fairly and equitably and ensure that taxable property does not escape assessment.
Finally, I disagree with the suggestion that federal aviation data collected for public safety purposes should categorically be unavailable to other government agencies with legitimate public purposes. Information sharing among local, state, and federal agencies is commonplace and often essential to effective government.
There is also a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the opposition to this technology. If the argument is that government should be prohibited from using lawfully available information to identify taxable property that has been concealed or has otherwise escaped assessment, the practical result is to make it easier for people to successfully avoid paying property taxes they legally owe. That is an absurd public-policy outcome.
We would never argue that government should deliberately ignore reliable information that helps identify unreported taxable property simply because improved technology makes enforcement more effective. Taxpayers who voluntarily comply with the law should not bear a greater burden because government is prevented from using modern tools to identify those who do not.
Safety, security, and privacy must, of course, remain paramount. Appropriate safeguards should always be in place. But protecting privacy and security is very different from creating a shield that enables tax avoidance. When government possesses information that can lawfully help another public agency carry out its responsibilities, there is a legitimate public interest in making that information available—with appropriate protections.
Ultimately, this is about fairness. People who comply with the law and pay the property taxes they owe should not be placed at a disadvantage to those who conceal taxable property or exploit gaps in available information to avoid paying th
The objection is that this was a voluntary equipping, at not insignificant owner expense, that when queried by owners, FAA assured that its only use would be in the furtherance of safety.
Perhaps if the Republic of CA volunteers to pay for the installation and maint of each resident acft’s ADS-B Out then your office’s effort would be viewed differently.
Jeff,
I commend you for coming on here and speaking to those affected by this decision by your office.
As Rich state below, the objection is largely around the use of ADS-B data the FAA assured us would only be used for safety. Additionally, there are some valid objections to what constitutes taxable storage for non-CA based aircraft, and what does not. Where is that line drawn? Where can we, as aircraft owners, look up the rules around these taxes? I can understand trying to close loopholes being used by some to evade taxation, but this is not the intended purpose of the ADS-B system.
Additionally, even if I did agree with your newly proposed use of this data (which I do not) I would add my concerns around your office’s ability to use this data fairly and effectively. As an aircraft owner, and tax payer in LA county, I have first hand experience with your office. I still get assessments every year for an aircraft which does not even exist. It has never existed, nor has it ever been registered in my name. I registered a tail number that was previously assigned to an aircraft which is no longer airworthy, whose registration had expired. Your office still sends me assessments every year for an aircraft with that tail number, with an incorrect year, manufacturer, and model listed, which was never even registered in my name with the FAA in the first place.
I can understand trying to close the loopholes and make sure people are paying their fair share of taxes. Frankly, I agree with those efforts. However, even if I did agree with your proposed means of doing so through the use of ADS-B data, I have no confidence your office has the competence to do so in good faith, as evidenced by my own issues with your office.
I’m sorry to learn about your experience with my office. Please feel free to contact me directly and I will get it resolved. jprang@assessor.lacounty.gov
Jeff: You must also determine why and how your processes and systems allowed the inaccurate and invalid assessments to be levied, and then fix those defective processes and systems so that it never, ever happens again.
“I disagree with the suggestion that federal aviation data collected for public safety purposes should categorically be unavailable to other government agencies with legitimate public purposes.”
As I understand it, the “routine use” exception of the Public Privacy Act of 2020 would beg to differ. It allows for government sharing of data so long as “…the use of such record [is] for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which it was collected.”
For example – EZ-Pass is an automatic highway toll system widely used in the Northeast. Its purpose is toll collection. And even though it would be child’s play, the data gathered is NOT used by law enforcement, such as issuing speeding tickets. Now, if a person was suspected of criminal activity then a court order can be used to obtain their EZ-Pass data. But it is not a general surveillance tool.
Similarly, ADS-B is used for safety (collision avoidance) and traffic management. Indeed, the FAA took pains to say the data would only be used for that purpose. “Property Assessment” is not “compatible with the purpose for which it was collected.”
Worse, you are presupposing guilt. Rather than targeting specific scofflaws with court orders you are hoovering up everyone’s data, (indirectly) levying taxes, then requiring people to prove their innocence.
Regrettably your concern regarding tracking of yours and everyone else’s vehicles nationwide is ongoing via “ Flock Cameras “ look them they are the largest infringement to our fourth amendment rights of the United States Constitution that has happened to date they circumvent the search and seizure laws via third-party information to the police and the flock camera companies, actively solicit to policing agencies to have subscriptions with them.
I also commend you for coming onto this site to offer more detail on the county’s position. All too rare in today’s world for a government official to voluntarily offer more information on a controversial topic.
Jeff, thanks for posting.
I think what you are missing is that you can only have one top priority. Yours is something other than safety.
“I don’t make the law;“
I was just following orders lmaooooo
Such was the argument at Nuremberg
Jeff, thank you for joining the discussion! What is the exact definition whereby an aircraft would be subject to the tax? Is that codified in some rule or regulation that can be referred to?
Jeff, No one would agree with putting government trackers in our cars letting police, the taxman, and whoever else monitor our cars location and where we travel constantly. It would never happen. The only reason pilots allowed that with ADSB was because of the promise of safety and data being used only for safety. These devices were also added voluntarily at the owners expense, not the governments. To use the data for anything other than safety is a violation of the agreement and our trust. It does make you the bad guy. It’s different if you have a specific plane you have reasonable suspicion of skipping taxes and you get a court order to collect data on that aircraft.
also, your state of commiefornia has a rich history of overly aggressive taxing. I’ve seen plenty of reports of people leaving your state, selling their house and not entering again and California still comes after them for years trying to get new taxes for the years after they moved and basically doing an audit making them prove they fully moved out.
your own statement is so vague and confusing as well. Aircraft that are in your county for a period of time? What’s a period of time? 1 hour? 1 day? 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? What’s that period you are looking for? Most places it’s explicitly given as like 180 days or 6 months. Basically it should be registered and taxed if it spends the majority of the year there (so it’s not double, triple, quadruple taxed by everywhere it’s visited). So what’s this magical “period of time” that makes you want to tax the plane?
The Assessor referred to a statute that specifies precisely what you said is “vague and confusing”:
“HABITUALLY SITUATED Rule 205, subsection (b), provides that general aircraft are assessable in the county where they are habitually situated. 5 The location where an aircraft is habitually situated is the airport at which the aircraft is usually present when not in flight, i.e., the location where the aircraft spends most of its ground time. Thus, if an aircraft spends a substantial amount of time at multiple airports, it is habitually situated at the airport where it spends the most ground time.” CA State Board of Equalization, Assessors’ Handbook, Section 577, p. 2. (emphasis added)
‘your state of commieforni’: creative, but not really indicative of rational discourse.
Thanks for providing that exact statue. He referenced it but only really said that’s aircraft that are there for a period of time are subject to taxation which is very concerning. Subject to taxation where it spends most of its ground time is much more clear and straightforward and would have been better if he directly said that from the start instead of vague “periods of time” which tax happy California has liked to stretch the limits on in the past. I hope that’s not what he’s doing and he’s legitimately just using where it spends most of its ground time. Using ADSB data for this is still a serious issue though.
Define “Substantial” and “Habitual”
“where it spends the most ground time”
I was just about to weigh in with Section 577. As a CA resident who also spends time in Oregon I read that section with interest. It sounds like Situs and Domicile are key definitions to be aware of when determining who should be assessing your aircraft, and how much is actually charged is based on the time spent in each Situs (e.g. County). I don’t think it’s worth the trouble right now but if I was 50% outside of CA I might talk with the local assessor’s office. Our local office in Marin is very helpful and friendly. I am uncomfortable with the use of ADS-B for levying annoying landing fees at airports that take lots of FAA $$ but finding owners that are trying to game the system
… game the system seems more reasonable.
Flock cameras comment was meant to go here
First off, I’ll add to the pile of people thanking you for coming here and posting a well-thought-out reply. You’re really coming into the lion’s den of people who are all heavily biased against anything you’ll say (me included!) as this issue is very close to many pilot’s hearts – good on you for doing so.
My personal issue that I haven’t seen brought up here is that if this safety data is used to appraise aircraft and determine whether they’ll be taxed, you’re adding incentive to NOT use safety systems. People will avoid adding ADSB to their planes (or even turn it off) in order to avoid taxation – which is stupid, but it’s how it goes. Doing everything you can to avoid paying taxes is unfortunately very American.
Nobody disagrees with your goal of wanting to reduce scofflaws trying to get around paying their fair share, for sure. And I know implementing other solutions are almost certainly going to be more expensive than simply looking at ADSB data. But we’re slow enough at adopting this safety standard as is – I’m absolutely against anything that would motivate people NOT to update their planes to increase safety in the NAS!
Nobody would turn it off. That would not be cricket. But how one prioritizes maintenance and repairs can get complicated…..
I’m not clear on exactly how they will establish the aircraft was there for a period of time, since the ADS-B wouldn’t respond to pings unless the aircraft is active and the ADS-B is powered up.
““If you have an aircraft and it’s here in L.A. County then it’s assessable for the period of time it’s in the county,” he said. “
“County Assessors are constitutionally responsible for valuing all taxable property, both real and personal, for property tax purposes. That responsibility includes commercial aircraft, such as those operating at LAX, as well as privately owned aircraft used for general aviation that are based or regularly operated in Los Angeles County.”
Some aircraft owners have exploited complex registration practices and data gaps to avoid detection, even though California law is clear, aircraft are taxable based on where they are primarily located and operated, not where they are registered.”
“Unfortunately, some aircraft owners go to considerable lengths to obscure where their aircraft are actually based in order to avoid assessment.”
Words mean something. “If you have an aircraft and it’s here in L.A. County then it’s assessable for the period of time it’s in the county,” he said. “…in this case Mr. Prang makes it clear, it is taxable for the “period of time it’s in the county”. Then he shifts gears and says an aircraft is taxable if its based or regularly operated in Los Angeles County. Then he adds comments where it is registered, “even though California law is clear, aircraft are taxable based on where they are primarily located and operated, not where they are registered”. “Some aircraft owners have exploited complex registration practices and data gaps to avoid detection”. So, why are is LA County spending time and resources gathering where they claim are data gaps on where an airplane is registered if they are taxing based on where they are primarily located and operated, not where they are registered? So, we have words such as based, registered, located, regularly operated, time in county…all applying to justification for taxation of both private and commercial aircraft in LA County. Now comes the DOUBLESPEAK.
“It is also important to emphasize that simply flying into Los Angeles County does not make an aircraft subject to property tax here. Assessors use established legal standards and methodologies to determine where an aircraft is habitually situated and whether it has sufficient taxable presence in California.
“Aircraft that merely visit or fly through the county generally would not be subject to assessment here.”
Ok, “generally” visiting aircraft in LA County in California would not be subject to taxation, only those that are in the county for a period of time (not defined of course), based, registered, located, and regularly operated. These words makes it clear to me, Mr. Prang representing LA County, that any airplane that shows up in LA County verified by ADS-B, registration data, flight tracking, flock cameras at the airport, and any other way of data collection, using “established legal standards and methodologies to determine where an aircraft is habitually situated will be assessed and taxed making the decision of taxation based on “whether it has SUFFICIENT TAXABLE PRESENCE in CALIFORNIA. With all of these words, it’s clear to fly to, or in, or fly through, maybe over LA County could be very expensive. WHY?
ANSWER: “Since the program was initiated in January 2026, the new system has identified nearly 1,000 previously unassessed aircraft. These discoveries are projected to generate nearly $2.5 billion in assessed value from prior year escaped assessments and more than $1 billion in new assessments for the 2026 tax year. Together, these assessments are expected to produce roughly $38 million in additional property tax revenue, funding that supports schools, cities, public safety, and other vital local services. That figure is expected to grow as investigations and further analysis continue.”
Translation of above? Big bucks!
Geez….I can not imagine any weather being so good, a taxpayer would want to live under this kind of taxation with Mr. Prang’s personal and LA County’s official explanation as justification of this behavior.
The point people seem to be missing is that aircraft owners who pay their taxes have no issues.
This is all about the cheap bastards who don’t want to pay typical property tax and try to weasal their way out of paying. That does not help GA.
No, the point is the wording is so vague and obfuscating that it’s difficult to determine which aircraft owner should be paying the taxes.
Some states make it clear with wording that say if the plane is in state for more than 180 days then it’s considered to be based in that state, with exceptions for planes undergoing maintenance or upgrades.
But the California statutes don’t have such clear-cut wording. At least, none have been offered so far.
And how are the hard working honest people of Ohio protected from “the cheap..who don’t want to pay typical [to california but nowhere else] property tax and try to weasel…” to be protected from the assessor who likely will not verify that an ADSB transmission is indeed identifying correctly the airplane it is installed in?
Or would the assessor simply say N….X ads-b out says it was flying around LA County between 100 and 4500 ft on Tuesday so we’ll tax it. What is to prevent, as I have personally observed, someone spoofing my N number, flying around in California? I get a bill for an airplane sitting in a hangar in Maine and have absolutely no way to dispute an improper taxation assessment, as @kpflight described above?
Will Jeff Prang pull the tower tapes from the SOCAL or the local airport towers to listen and validate (or debunk) my non-existent radio transmissions? I doubt it since he admits he has snagged over 1000 aircraft in his net so far, and we’re just getting started here. That would take many hours of assessor time adding collection expenses of California’s living wages, generous benefits and generous perks.
All of the self serve fuel pumps that I have used all require inputting a tail number. I suppose that any number could be used.
Full serve fuel also collect the tail number.
So, the FBO knows what aircraft are being fueled there.
It is a simple thing for the FBO to report to the county who is consistently fueling there.
So, the ADSB -out data is not necessarily needed. The fuel pumps/trucks could be equipped with a ‘tail number reader’, to collect the data
“It is a simple thing for the FBO to report to the county who is consistently fueling there.”
Marina owners are often tasked with the same record-keeping about which boats are moored at their location and for how long. They try to fight it on the grounds that they are now unpaid tax assessors/collectors, with no respite from the burden of collecting and submitting such data. The fight is often successful (“you can’t fight City Hall”). Airports are often saddled with similar regulations.
Long before ADS-B was a dream, I received a bill for landing and parking at PHX. The only problem is, I have never land at and consequently never parked at PHX. They demanded proof I had not done that. Fortunately that was pretty easy since I had fuel receipts the same week from my based airport region over 1700 nm away, but what if the airplane had not been flown then?
Now, frequently for a time, my N number is reported as flying in the California central valley and mid-coastal region. Once on Flightaware, it was shown to be flying in two places at once. While I would love to have an airplane transporter to save the roughly 11 hours to get to CA, I don’t think they exist yet. I double checked the ADSB with the government site and sure enough putting the best construction possible on it, someone had misconfigured their ADS-B out, spoofing my 1090ES.
So, we will be burdened with proving we were not in California? It will be like getting a speeding ticket from a town you’ve never been to and will never go to.
How does LA plan to defend this? There is precedent under the Interstate Commerce Clause dating back to the early 19th century cases preventing states from taxing interstate commerce. How will this affect a business based in Dallas with factories in Cupertino or Palo Alto who regularly travel to CA to conduct business?
But, California has enough other problems with no need to create new ones for itself.
Just one more, of a thousand reasons, I’m never going to California ever again. Never, ever, again.
Only a thousand?
Routinely FlightAware has listed my N# as having been on Xcountry legs into airports 1500 miles from my true location and mention of having laned at x airports in the same region.
To quote, ‘So, we will be burdened with proving we were not in California? It will be like getting a speeding ticket from a town you’ve never been to and will never go to.
How does LA plan to defend this? There is precedent under the Interstate Commerce Clause dating back to the early 19th century cases preventing states from taxing interstate commerce.’
Are the state of California and Los Angeles County willing to engage in a long-term repudiation of this erroneous information? will I have to? That will be a long-term litigation!
Recently I have seen listed on FlightAware my N # being listed as flown legs within a region that is across the country from me and having landed at airports 3000 miles away from my true geographic location, and to quote other individuals that have posted here already,” I double checked the ADSB with the government site and sure enough putting the best construction possible on it, someone had misconfigured their ADS-B out, spoofing my 1090ES.”
So, will I be burdened with proving I was not in California? Tantamount to getting a speeding ticket from a town you’ve never been to and will never go to.
Tantamount to Eze pass targeting you for a toll bridge that you never crossed.
How does LA plan to defend this? There is precedent under the Interstate Commerce Clause dating back to the early 19th century cases preventing states from taxing interstate commerce.
This can lead to long and extended litigation.
Everybody watch out, cars, trucks, and other vehicles may very well be next! With all the electronic locating equipment on our newest vehicles, the capability is probably already there.
That is already being discussed. Taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel were used to pay for roads and bridges.
Until electric cars came on the scene.
They don’t consume gasoline or diesel, but they do use roads and bridges. So how do we get those cars to pay their fair share? Why not track their mileage? And once that mechanism is in place, why not track ALL cars this way?