FAA to begin taxing launches by payload weight
As per the provisions in last year’s reconciliation budget bill (dubbed for propaganda reasons by Trump the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”), the FAA was authorized to begin charging fees (another word for taxes) on the mass of each launch payload. The agency last week announced it is now doing so.
More information here.
For 2026, that fee is 25 cents per pound of payload, capped at $30,000 per launch or reentry. The fees would fund work on improving integration of launches and reentries into the national airspace system directed by an FAA reauthorization act in 2024.
Though the amount per launch is small compared to the cost of the launch itself, this new tax is expected to provide ample funds to allow the FAA to expand its licensing operations to meet the growing launch industry. The real challenge will be whether the bureaucracy can stay focused on its main task of serving the public, or use the money to build a new bureaucratic empire aimed at garnering power over the private sector. History suggests we should be pessimistic, and expect the latter.
In the meantime, rocket companies are simply going to apply this new tax to the makers of their payloads, who in turn will have their customers pay the cost.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
As per the provisions in last year’s reconciliation budget bill (dubbed for propaganda reasons by Trump the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”), the FAA was authorized to begin charging fees (another word for taxes) on the mass of each launch payload. The agency last week announced it is now doing so.
More information here.
For 2026, that fee is 25 cents per pound of payload, capped at $30,000 per launch or reentry. The fees would fund work on improving integration of launches and reentries into the national airspace system directed by an FAA reauthorization act in 2024.
Though the amount per launch is small compared to the cost of the launch itself, this new tax is expected to provide ample funds to allow the FAA to expand its licensing operations to meet the growing launch industry. The real challenge will be whether the bureaucracy can stay focused on its main task of serving the public, or use the money to build a new bureaucratic empire aimed at garnering power over the private sector. History suggests we should be pessimistic, and expect the latter.
In the meantime, rocket companies are simply going to apply this new tax to the makers of their payloads, who in turn will have their customers pay the cost.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I don’t support this. This ranks up there with funding handicapped ramps by taxing wheelchairs.
Everyone uses space, whether they think they do or not.
This is where the advantage of smallsats comes in. The PocektQubes I make cost about a $1 each on this new FAA fee. I see why they need to implement it but yeah it will trickle down to customers.
And that’s what I am worried about.
For years, those of us who are HLLV advocates chafed at puny Delta II prison-cell shrouds…and right when VAST/Starship/SLS comes along–they start this crud.
Ban the FCC
No law in the arena
Jeff, it’s the FAA, not the FCC – though there certainly are problems there.. As Zeeman points out we need some sort of control interface between space and atmospheric traffic. Otherwise we face the human, PR and political disaster of a reentry vehicle knocking a 777 from the sky. I have a private pilots license and I follow the FARs and NOTAM’s – they are there to, among other things, keep me safe, I, like the vast majority of aviators, hold the ‘cowboys’ who violate them or take pleasure in seeing how close than can get, in contempt
Is there any history on all this, or did they just finally get around to it?
I said years ago that NASA is eventually just going to be a standards agency for Space equipment and an space traffic/air traffic control agency.
If they want they could be a ground communications coordination center. Someone needs to organize and regulate the world wide communications systems.
I’m perplexed by the wording “ per launch or reentry”.
What goes up, must come down.
Will they will be charging their fee when a satellite is de orbited.
A round trip toll like they do on bridges would make sense.
Maybe they want to play catch up on what’s already up there.
My point is that whatever taxes needed for infrastructure need to come from the public at large.
Cigarettes, beer…. anything enjoyed by Mundanes.
Tax the heck out of sports.
Jerry Greenwood: I think “reentry” is in connection with recoverable capsules or spacecraft, not de-orbiting defunct satellites or spacecraft.
“get around to it”
A lot cheaper just to go to Amazon…
https://www.amazon.com/round-tuit-coin/s?k=round+tuit+coin
:)
It’s been a long day…
I have long feared the start of taxes in this arena.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy”.
R. Limbaugh
When power in Congress flips, the law is there to allow them to go after Musk. And anyone else that has fallen from favor.
I do wonder if this tax applies to Rocket Lab launches from New Zealand. RL is partly a US company.
Wow Jeff
Just Wow.
Mundanes??
Really?
COL Beausabre:
You have been too long away. Monty Python’s ‘Holy Grail’ comes to mind.
Robert wrote: “Though the amount per launch is small compared to the cost of the launch itself, this new tax is expected to provide ample funds to allow the FAA to expand its licensing operations to meet the growing launch industry.”
Well, that seems like a noble cause for spending tax money — er — fees. Of course, every time the government makes a new tax it is for a noble cause so that no one dares complain. Then the tax grows and the scope widens until California’s excessive gas tax ends up going directly into the general fund rather than repairing roads, like it is supposed to do.
“History suggests we should be pessimistic, and expect the latter.”
I wonder how long it will take for the FAA’s new tax — er — user fee to likewise become corrupted.
It strikes me that capping this tax at $30,000/launch is effectively a sort of back-handed subsidy to Elon for near-future massive Starship commodity payloads such as propellant destined for LEO and cis-lunar depot ships and big-arse pieces of machinery destined for SpaceX subsidiaries StarMines and StarSmelt at Moonbase Alpha. While this tax, as currently structured, would gig every pound of even maximum payloads of every launch vehicle currently operating or in prospect, except for the last 4 tons of payload for a fully-expended Falcon Heavy, it would leave less than 1/4 of the payload of, say a 9-Raptor V4 tanker Starship with a 250-tonne payload capacity to LEO actually taxed.
If revenue generation is truly the goal, it would make more sense to eliminate the cap on the tax and substitute a blanket exemption for the first, say, metric tonne or two of payload. This would allow small launch vehicles to operate tax-free while still generating revenue from most of every payload carried by larger vehicles such as New Glenn, Vulcan, Terran-R, Neutron, Antares, Eclipse, Nova, the Falcons and Starship.
These medium-, heavy- and super-heavy-lift craft are likely to constitute the majority of actual launch traffic in future so revenue needed to support their licensure and integration into airspace management should properly fall most heavily on them. I don’t think actual small launch vehicles will constitute a very significant percentage of total launch events going forward so an exemption for them seems reasonable.
An interesting question is how this tax – given my suggested modifications – would be allocated among the multiple payloads of a given rideshare mission. I suspect SpaceX, and other future providers of such services, would likely pass the savings on to those who signed up earliest for a given launch.
Good lord, Dick, quit givin’ ’em ideas! This is exactly how we end up with expanded taxes from the gov’mint’s promises. Don’t you remember a hundred fifteen years ago when they promised that income taxes would not affect anyone earning less than $30,000. How long did that promise last?
The best thing is to not have the tax in the first place. It is just more money for the go’mint to waste on bogus stuff, which they will then expand into a lot more bogus stuff that will require even more taxes, huge national debt, and so much printed money that inflation will soar. Again.
Wasn’t it Carl’s Jr. that used to have the Six Dollar Burger — a deal, because the price tag on it was three or four dollars — until Biden’s inflation and Newsom’s Exceptionally high fast-food minimum wage caused the price of even the cheapest hamburger to soar way above six dollars. What was a five dollar lunch twenty years ago just cost me twenty dollars today (Tuesday). I Kid. You. Not!
Jerry Greenwood observed: “What goes up, must come down.”
Not necessarily.
If you are building something beyond Earth orbit, you don’t expect it to come down. Until extra-terrestrial resource production becomes A Thing, there will likely be many such launches. Likewise, bringing off-world production to Earth is re-entry only. It occurs to me that there is a *lot* of law not hinted at in SciFi.
I am with Edward solidly on this one..
I don’t get the support for this one. Tax money should go to–but NEVER away from, spaceflight.
This rewards people for thinking small. Dandridge Cole is spinning.
Yes, I said mundanes.
Bester was too soft :)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s72fJb7a-s8&pp=ygUdQmVzdGVyIG9uIG11bmRhbmVzIEJhYnlsb24gNSA%3D
Capping the tax makes sense because the FAA’s role is traffic management.
Each launch needs traffic control, but a large launch at a certain point doesn’t need any more than a smaller one.
Doing it the other way around where you get a free ride if your payload is small is a subsidy for startups. If you’re going to do that, a better solution is to actually subsidize smaller launches.
Of course that would be easier to cancel, so they won’t do that.
Jeff Wright,
Tax money belongs to the taxpayers, not to the government or to space companies. It should only be appropriated if there’s a legitimate need, not because we like space. The ‘mundanes’ won’t be willing to give you a dime more when you think yourself superior to them. Edward told you a while back that you are Marshall’s worst enemy. Your language can make more enemies of spaceflight–people who don’t like space or just aren’t interested will look at people like you, and ask, “Why should my tax money go to support this?”
We can look at taxes like this another way, too: they can incentivize ISRU, manufacturing on orbit, anything that shifts the origin of payloads to beyond Earth. That flips your contention about thinking small on its head. Is it a great idea because of this? No, but neither is it the end of the world.
We will need space traffic control, eventually. I don’t think this is a great solution, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Is the air traffic control system funded by a tax on airplanes? (I really have no idea.) If so, points for consistency, which is unusual in government.
NateP, nice points.
I love Bester as a character. As a person, I would despise him.
We all benefit from air traffic., and space, so we should all pay taxes on it.
If you tax space professionals only, that really is punishing success.
Same with the NIMBYs who want to use the cloud but don’t want to live next to the server.
Space is underfunded enough without siphoning from it.
M wrote: “Capping the tax makes sense because the FAA’s role is traffic management.”
The FAA’s role is aviation. In this case its role is to keep hazard zones clear of air traffic during launch or reentry windows. The cost of this duty does not change with the weight of the payload. This makes it a tax, not a usage fee.
_________
Nate P wrote: “We can look at taxes like this another way, too: they can incentivize ISRU, manufacturing on orbit, anything that shifts the origin of payloads to beyond Earth. That flips your [Jeff Wright’s] contention about thinking small on its head. Is it a great idea because of this? No, but neither is it the end of the world.”
Not the end of the world until the tax reaches high levels or the control from the FAA reaches far beyond the original role. It would indeed give incentive to in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), especially if we want to have Gerard K. O’Neil’s space-based solar power beamed to Earth, to have his space colonies, or to have both.
Government interference should not be the driver for space utilization. The driver should be that space is a good idea. Government interference is why we have moved so very slowly in space over the past two-thirds century.
I think that the FAA saw proposals for million-satellite constellations, and their eyes filled-up with dollar signs. That is a lot of mass to launch, making for a lot of revenue for providing a very low cost service.
__________
Mark Sizer,
Best bad guy ever. He truly believed that he was the good guy and that doing evil was justified to save homo superior (yes, a mundane called them that) from slavery by homo sapiens.
M,
The FAA’s job is air traffic management. Space launches and re-entries impinge on airspace during ascent and descent so the FAA has a legitimate interest in managing these events anent their interaction with the strictly endo-atmospheric traffic it has long managed.
It is true that, to a considerable degree, a launch is a launch, but airports charge takeoff and landing fees to aircraft, part of which is passed along to the FAA. And, while a takeoff or landing of a 747 has much in common with that of a Piper Cub, airports don’t charge the same takeoff and landing fees for one as for the other.
Big airports do charge takeoff and landing fees high enough to discourage routine flight ops in and out of them by very small aircraft. There is a separate tier of smaller airports to serve such traffic at much lower cost.
I see no reason why the same will not, in general, be true of – and beneficial for – space launch operations. The big birds will pay more than the smaller birds and the smallest birds will probably not be permitted to operate from “Big Boy” spaceports past a certain point but will need to find other venues.
And, yes, a tax on lift mass with a floor above zero is a sort of subsidy for small launch providers. I think that would be beneficial for the industry as it’s typically start-ups that operate small launchers and they should not be burdened with taxes for the few launches and small payloads they will typically do during their early years. Perhaps if, as with Rocket Lab, an operator of small launch vehicles continues them in service and launches them a lot, the tax exemption should go away once a certain minimum number of annual launches is reached. Tax policy is often structured to encourage business formation. This would just be another such example.
Mark Sizer,
We will need space traffic control, but it is not obvious we need some governmental body like the FAA to do it. SpaceX has developed its own system for automated space traffic management and is offering it to other spacecraft operators under the StarGaze name on a cooperative basis. This can become standard for all spacecraft operators without government agencies or taxation being involved.
As far as tiered taxes based on vehicle size, that’s already the case with aircraft operations and even with things like large trucks on public highways. Applying that paradigm to space launches seems entirely in keeping with current practice in other transport modes.
Edward,
Not a big fan of taxation myself, but a reasonable schedule of user fees is hardly out of line. What will keep them reasonable is the same thing that keeps highway usage fees and airport operation fees reasonable – they are assessed against, and paid by, businesses far more than by individuals. And businesses, singly and in groups, tend to be able to exert considerably more political influence than individual people. So the bureaucrats don’t exactly have free rein to impose unlimited exactions.
Dick Eagleson
“Not a big fan of taxation myself, but a reasonable schedule of user fees is hardly out of line. What will keep them reasonable is the same thing that keeps highway usage fees and airport operation fees reasonable – they are assessed against, and paid by, businesses far more than by individuals.”
Since these taxes and fees are passed along to customers, then the customers do not see how much more expensive their purchases are due to these now-hidden taxes. If they are not passed along, due to competition or other disincentives, then it becomes harder for companies to survive in the real world. They don’t make as much profit, so investors become encouraged to invest elsewhere.
What keeps taxes and fees reasonable is government having too little money to allow waste and corruption to flourish. This is what has happened over the past century, ever since governments have had way too much money from income taxes. Governments suddenly had money in hand to start useless and wasteful programs, then raised tax rates in order to keep them going during the hard times.
To paraphrase: Governments are weak. Governments are selfish. When governments choose, they choose wrong every single time,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkZcEJBcLmU#t=89 (The Giver, 1 minute, Choose wrong)
“And businesses, singly and in groups, tend to be able to exert considerably more political influence than individual people. So the bureaucrats don’t exactly have free rein to impose unlimited exactions.”
.Maybe, but California’s government is so tyrannical that they impose many restrictions and requirements on its businesses. Recently, a new minimum wage for fast food workers gives them $20 per hour. Los Angeles is about to give hospitality (hotel) workers $30. What limits the free rein is businesses fleeing the state due to the lack of limitations on exactions, regulations, and rules. Two oil producers fled the state, at the beginning of this year, leaving us with fewer oil refineries, so now we import most of our gasoline from overseas (not even other states are willing to deal with California’s irrational regulations). Businesses do not have power in this state, so they flee to a more reasonable one.
So if we let the FAA have even more power over us, or our orbital launch companies, we can count on then to accept that inch and then take a mile in yet another power grab, sometime in the near future.
Edward: I agree. I don’t think the tax is a great idea, but hyperventilating about it now is not productive. Better to challenge it legally.
Edward opined: “Best bad guy ever.” [re: Alfred Bester B5]”
Better than Khan? Dude. There is a lot of Bester in The Operative of the FCM (Firefly Cinematic Universe). It wasn’t until I read “The Stars My Destination” that I understood the reference, or, I suppose, ‘Easter Egg’.
The novel has been called the best SciFi novel, which is quite the claim. I can’t say I disagree.
Sorta OT but anyway….
After thousands of years a new chess piece has been invented. It can move to any square but can’t actually do anything except get in the way of the other pieces. It is called “The Bureaucrat”.
Blair Ivey,
You asked: “Better than Khan? Dude. There is a lot of Bester in The Operative of [Firefly’s Serenity]”
My opinion? Even better than Khan. Khan was good, but his motivation was vengeance, which makes him a little too standard.
I’ll give you The Operative, but he would have been better if he had had more screen time. He was fabulous, and for the same reasons as Bester. The Operative’s advantage is that he knew he was doing evil, but he also knew why he was evil. The best part of him was that he understood full well that there was no place for him — or anyone like him — in civilized society. Second best part was that he believed that evil people like him were necessary for a civilized society. He was right about the former, but I think societies have been civilized without people like him for many millennia. He had beliefs, and he was following them. But then, so was Bester.
Bester’s main advantage was that we followed his life long enough to see a story arc in which he grows as a person — perhaps becoming more evil with time — and we see enough of his interactions with others to understand him much better as a character.
By the way, these bad guys, and Hans Gruber, got me paying much closer attention to their actors.
On the other hand, I have not considered bad guys from literature, only ones from the screen actors guild. I have a tendency to not understand some characters on the page, but a good actor can fill in where I fall short. Getting away from bad guys, I do not like Hagrid in the books, but on screen I like him very much. The actor interpreted him much better than I do.
*Sigh* Now that we have drifted off topic so dramatically, I feel obligated to make a comment that gets back on topic. Maybe I can say something about hyperventilating.
_________
Nate P,
Hyperventilating (or just venting my displeasure) may not be as productive as a legal challenge, but I cannot afford to make the challenge, and I don’t have standing for a court case. At best, I can use my natural free speech right to post comments that encourage those who do have standing to challenge the tax — er — fee.
Edward,
Oh, I don’t mean you. You’re far more emotionally balanced than that.