On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:56:07 -0500, Charles Vincent
wrote:


Pat Phillips, a member of the EAA Legal Advisory Council as well as Sun
’n Fun air show chairman and a fly-in director, is familiar with the
situation. “If somebody goes out of state and buys an airplane in a
state that charges no sales tax and brings it to Florida, and the
airplane is based in Florida, the buyer lives in Florida, and is using
the airplane in Florida, yes, he would owe a 6 percent use tax,” he said.

“Now, if a transient aircraft comes into Florida from a state where they
have not paid sales tax on the aircraft or are just visiting here, they
would have no obligation to pay a use tax in the state of Florida just
for using their airplane while visiting in the state,” he said. “And I
believe constitutionally that would be in conflict with the commerce
laws of the U.S.”

Phillips added, “If a person, willingly or innocently, avoids sales tax
by buying out of state but bases his aircraft in Florida and lives in
the state, then the use tax obligation may apply. But for a person who
simply flies down to Florida but lives in another state, he will not be
assessed a tax. It’s preposterous to even think the state would impose a
sales tax.”

So is the EAA lawyer going to go talk to the Florida DOR for the
Meridian owner who flew to VRB for training and got smacked with a
$100,000 tax bill because he flew to FL in an out-of-state based and
registered aircraft for a week to get training and then left? It's
not like the original areo-news article (and today's follow-up cover
responding to the EAA's above message) doesn't have documented cases
of people having to go to court for what he says is "preposterous to
even think" would happen.