Private Jets, Public Taxes: Tax Policy Follows Visible Wealth
If an asset is easy to see, easy to value, and easy to connect to a family, it is easy to tax. Ownership design is the answer.
Writing in Fortune, Greg Raiff warned that New York's attention to high-value assets may extend from real estate to private aviation, through landing surcharges, registration taxes, or taxes on flight activity.1 Whether or not any particular proposal becomes law, the piece illustrates a pattern that anyone who owns high-value property should understand.
Tax policy follows visible wealth
Legislators tax what they can see. If an asset is easy to identify, easy to value, easy to connect to a particular family, and easy to politicize, it is an easy target. Mansions, aircraft, yachts, art, and closely held business interests all fit that description. Cash in a diversified brokerage account does not, which is one reason it is rarely the subject of a new surcharge.
The practical consequence is that for aircraft, real estate, business interests, collectibles, and other high-value assets, ownership design matters as much as the purchase price.
One structure to consider
A structure that comes up often in my practice looks like this: the visible asset is owned by a privacy-oriented Wyoming limited liability company, and the LLC interests are held by a South Dakota domestic asset protection trust.
Each layer does a job. Wyoming does not require the names of LLC members or managers to appear in public filings, so the public record shows an entity rather than a family. The trust layer separates the family from the entity, adds a fiduciary who administers the structure, and brings in South Dakota's trust law, which was written with multigenerational planning in mind.
Depending on the facts, that type of planning may help with:
- Privacy-oriented ownership, so that the public record does not announce who owns what
- Asset protection against creditor claims arising from the asset or elsewhere
- Divorce protection for the next generation, since trust assets are not the beneficiary's own property
- South Dakota trust situs advantages, including no state income tax on accumulated trust income and no rule against perpetuities
- Dynasty planning, so the asset and its replacements can be held for descendants
- Long-term family governance, with a trustee, an advisor, and written rules about use and expense
What the structure does not do
Ownership design does not make an aircraft invisible to the FAA, and it does not eliminate sales and use tax, property tax, or the federal income tax rules that govern personal use of a business aircraft. Those issues have their own rules and their own planning. What a well-designed structure does is keep the family from being the obvious name on a politically convenient list, and keep the asset protected and governed if something goes wrong.
Move first
Tax proposals can move quickly, and the ones aimed at visible wealth tend to move with public support. Trust planning moves at the speed of a careful lawyer, which is slower. The families that come out ahead are the ones who design the ownership of their high-value assets before a proposal is on the table, not after.
Notes
- Greg Raiff, "Mamdani's New York is coming to tax your private jet. Here's how to prepare," Fortune (May 16, 2026). ↩
Terry L. (T. L.) Turnipseed, J.D., LL.M., CTFA, is a tax, trust and estate attorney in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Head of Estate and Tax Planning at Alta Trust Company. He is a former tenured professor of law at Syracuse University. Reach him at tl@turnipseed.law or on LinkedIn. This article is general information, not legal advice.