Private Jet Sales Hit $40.3 Billion as Tax Breaks Reshape the Market

Global private jet sales reached $40.3 billion in 2025, up nearly 24% over five years and growing at a 4.7% annual rate, according to a September report from the Institute for Policy Studies.

The report frames the boom as a taxpayer-subsidized industry serving 256,000 people, or 0.003% of the global population, who hold $31 trillion in wealth. Noncommercial private jets account for about 7% of flights handled by the Federal Aviation Administration but contribute just 0.6% of the taxes flowing into the fund that finances it, the Department of Transportation told IPS researchers.

"Those are the menu of ways in which we all chip in for private jet travel," said Chuck Collins, coauthor of the report and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS. "We all subsidize this tiny segment of the ultra rich and their transportation."

How do tax breaks drive jet sales?

President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act restored 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying business assets, including private aircraft. Eligible buyers can now deduct the full cost of a jet in the year it enters service.

Justin Crabbe, CEO of private jet marketplace Jettly, said he has watched companies buy $75 million private jets to "wash a lot of tax obligations off of their plate just by way of that purchase" instead of needing to fly them.

"We get a lot of people and inquiries [from] people that don't even need the aircraft," Crabbe said. Buyers then place the jet into charter service so it earns revenue and supports the case for business-related use.

IPS illustrated the deduction with a $40 million jet. The first-year write-off could reduce a buyer's federal tax liability by as much as $14.8 million at a 37% rate, depending on income, business use, and other circumstances. The institute could not calculate how much total federal revenue is foregone.

What do state exemptions add up to?

Depreciation is not the only advantage. Eight states, including Alaska, Oregon, New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts, offer full or near-total sales tax exemptions on private jet purchases. The Massachusetts carve-out will cost the state $25.3 million this year, according to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

"The bicycle buyers of America are not a powerful lobby, so you have to pay sales tax, and you don't get to depreciate your bicycle in one year," Collins said.

Massachusetts Sen. Michael J. Barrett introduced a bill last year to repeal the exemption. The Legislature's revenue committee is reviewing it.

Who defends the tax breaks?

The National Business Aviation Association and allied groups spent a combined $3.4 million lobbying Congress in 2024 and 2025, according to the IPS report. The spending coincided with the Big Beautiful Bill's restoration of 100% bonus depreciation for private jets.

The trade group has also fought state-level taxes. In Washington, the NBAA opposed a 10% luxury tax on aircraft worth more than $500,000 that passed in May 2025 and urged private jet operators to "make their voices heard." A bill repealing the tax became law before the levy took effect.

A pending air-safety bill, the ALERT Act, includes a House provision that would block state and local officials from using aircraft-tracking data to identify and tax private jets. The Senate version strips that language out. Lawmakers are racing to pass the bill before the midterms.

How much do taxpayers spend on jet infrastructure?

Private jet owners also benefit from federal airport spending. IPS found that of the $7.6 billion in federal Airport Infrastructure Grants awarded through August, about $1.3 billion went to smaller airports that mostly serve private aviation. The report flagged more than $1.1 billion in grants for projects with a "strong likelihood" of benefiting private jets, including hangars and runway improvements.

"Private jets don't chip in their fair share of the use of the airspace," Collins said.

Commercial passengers fund the system through a 7.5% federal ticket tax. Private jet owners do pay fuel taxes and landing charges, Crabbe noted, but they use the same runways, towers, and controllers.

"The controller has to work for the same aircraft that's flying in with 400 people on board [as] it does an aircraft with nobody on board," Crabbe said. He estimated that about half of private flights involve an empty plane. "The taxpayers are paying for these planes to be supported while they're flying empty more often than not."

The structural math leaves the private jet class paying a small fraction of the system that supports it. Any meaningful reform will have to confront both the federal depreciation rules and the patchwork of state sales tax exemptions that keep the most expensive aircraft in the air, and the ALERT Act fight will test how far lawmakers are willing to go before November.