Wants Retroactive Payments For Five Years
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots
Association says American pilots who have flown in Canada are now
being told they have to pay taxes on the Nav Canada user fees
they've already paid, retroactively, going back five years.
"We have always opposed user fees, and this latest insult shows
just how flawed and inefficient the system is," said AOPA President
Phil Boyer, who has asked Nav Canada to waive the tax collection
for US aircraft operators. "How much is Nav Canada now going to
spend to attempt to track down the pilot of the aircraft to collect
this tax? A simple fuel tax makes so much more sense."
What's more egregious, is this latest attempt to collect appears
to stem from Nav Canada's own errors. Nav Canada is a private
corporation the Canadian government had spun off to run the air
navigation and control system. In theory, it's supposed to run like
a business... charging fees for flight briefings, access to
navigation aids, and air traffic control services.
But this "business" didn't realize that it was supposed to
collect "goods and services tax" at the time it sold its service to
the pilot. Then the Canada Revenue Agency -- their version of IRS
-- audited the books, and told Nav Canada it was obligated for the
taxes it should have collected.
AOPA notes a regular "business" would likely have to pay for
this mistake out of its own pocket... but not Nav Canada. It's
attempting to track down every aircraft that's flown in its
airspace in the last five years and retroactively collect the tax
from the aircraft owner.
The timeframe is only five years due to the statute of
limitations. In reality, Nav Canada hasn't collected the tax since
it formed in 1999, the pilot advocacy group pointed out.
"Chasing after customers who have
paid for services in full is poor business practice," said Boyer.
"This burden shouldn't be placed on the backs of pilots who
rightfully believed that they had completely fulfilled their
financial obligations to Nav Canada."
Boyer said that the logistical effort necessary to collect the
service tax on air traffic service charges was "an excellent
example of how fee for service or privatized air traffic control
systems are flawed. The expenses incurred by Nav Canada just to
collect revenues are much higher than the truly minor cost of
collecting revenues through a fuel tax."
Wanna bet how long it will take the US government to float a
trial balloon on this idea, too? But Boyer says AOPA's already
thought of that possibility.
"And the very idea of a tax on top of a fee. AOPA will continue
to fight to make sure the United States never tries to go down that
airway," Boyer vowed.
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (05.04.24)
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