NEW: Did Loeffler Use Corporate “Tax Loophole to Write Off Campaign Jet?”

After buying a private jet to hop between Georgia and DC, Loeffler may have used Trump tax giveaway to write off multimillion-dollar plane

ATLANTA — A new report from Salon reveals that unelected “political mega-donor” Senator Kelly Loeffler may be taking advantage of “a loophole in President Trump’s 2017 tax bill that turns private jets into flying tax shelters.”

Loeffler had already come under fire for buying a multimillion-dollar aircraft to jet around the state for her Senate bid while chartering it under a system offering “anonymity.” Yet financial disclosures reveal that Loeffler may have taken advantage  of Trump’s tax giveaway for the wealthy to write off the cost of this aircraft.

“While Georgians are still struggling to make ends meet after the Senate failed to pass additional coronavirus relief, Senator Kelly Loeffler is jet-setting around in her private plane while potentially writing off that cost on the backs of working Georgia families who got screwed by Trump’s corporate tax giveaway,” said Alex Floyd, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia. “Senator Loeffler owes Georgia taxpayers answers on whether they had to help fund her secretive private jet.”

Read more about Loeffler’s potentially tax-dodging private jet: 

Salon: Did Sen. Kelly Loeffler take advantage of a Trump tax loophole to write off campaign jet?

• Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republican now seeking to hold her seat in a crucial runoff election, has been hopping between campaign stops in a multimillion-dollar private jet that she and her husband bought soon after Gov. Brian Kemp appointed her to the Senate last December.

• Despite her campaign’s claims that she uses the plane to “save taxpayer money,” Loeffler, a former asset management executive, may well now have joined the “frenzy” of Wall Street money managers who leapt at a loophole in President Trump’s 2017 tax bill that turns private jets into flying tax shelters.

• Embedded in that bill is a provision that permits a company to write off the full price of a new or used airplane against the company’s earnings.

• It is not clear how much Loeffler paid for the jet, a 2010 Bombardier Challenger 300 that she has used for campaign travel, but an online listing asks $9.7 million for the same model and year.

• The ownership arrangement for this particular jet is opaque. For one thing, the couple chartered the plane under a company called TVPX Aircraft Solutions, which provides an “owner trust” that, among other things, offers anonymity.

• A Loeffler campaign spokesperson did not respond to multiple detailed questions for this article.

• Loeffler has taken the plane, which she bought last December, on campaign flights as short as an 18-minute hop from a central Georgia hot dog stand to Savannah, as well as between the Peach State and Washington, D.C.

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