Why It Matters
A Missouri Republican’s effort to shield private aircraft owners from state and local tax collection could cost assessors tens of millions in uncollected revenue while advancing a broader privacy argument that may reshape how states track taxable property. The measure, now embedded in federal aviation legislation, reveals a collision between tax enforcement and aircraft-owner privacy protections.
What Happened
U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, a St. Charles County Republican, authored a provision that would prohibit states and local governments from using aircraft-location data to identify planes for taxation purposes. The language was folded into federal aviation safety legislation by U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a northwest Missouri Republican, and passed the House in April as part of the broader ALERT Act.
Onder framed the measure as a privacy defense against what he described as “exorbitant” landing fees and frivolous litigation. The original bill, the “Pilot and Aircraft Privacy Act,” became Section 105 of the ALERT Act—a package of roughly 50 safety recommendations assembled following a January 2025 helicopter-jet collision near Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people. The House approved the ALERT Act 396-10.
The provision gained traction amid a 2024 federal law that allows private aircraft owners to withhold their names and addresses from the public aircraft registry. Around the same time, the Missouri State Tax Commission stopped providing county assessors with aircraft lists drawn from Federal Aviation Administration data.
Chrissy Gillis, president of the Missouri State Assessors Association and Putnam County assessor, said the new rules have complicated her work. “With the new regulations and the ability to hide their information,” she noted, “it has made this process very difficult to appropriately determine what aircraft is registered within counties for assessment purposes.”
By the Numbers
16 — aircraft at Missouri airfields registered to Montana limited liability companies, a jurisdiction with no general sales tax or property tax on aircraft
$209,000 — donations to Rep. Sam Graves’ campaign and leadership committees by Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and National Business Aviation Association political action committees since 2000
$5,000 — donation to Rep. Bob Onder from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association PAC in late September
1,000 — aircraft identified by Los Angeles County assessors since the start of the current year that had not been previously taxed
$3.5 billion — combined assessed value of the 1,000 aircraft identified in Los Angeles County
Zoom Out
The effort reflects a nationwide pattern of aircraft owners using regulatory gaps and tax havens to avoid property taxation. Los Angeles County’s recent discovery of $3.5 billion in untaxed aircraft assets demonstrates the scale of potential revenue loss when location-tracking becomes difficult. Missouri’s experience—with at least 16 planes registered to out-of-state entities—mirrors challenges in other states attempting to enforce property tax compliance on mobile assets.
The provision also sits within a broader debate over data privacy. Federal law now allows aircraft owners to keep identifying information out of public registries, a protection that aircraft-owner advocacy groups have championed. That shift has left county assessors, who historically relied on FAA data, searching for alternative methods to track taxable property within their jurisdictions.
What’s Next
The ALERT Act, with Onder’s provision intact, now faces the Senate, which has advanced its own competing aviation safety measure called the ROTOR Act. That bill contains no comparable language shielding aircraft from tax-collection data use. Whether the two chambers will reconcile around Onder’s language—or whether it survives final negotiation—remains unclear. State tax administrators and county assessors are watching closely, as the outcome could reshape how local governments identify and tax aircraft assets across the country.