1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

July 24, a group of Democratic senators wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asking him to close a tax loophole that allows top executives at well-to-do companies to undervalue the cost of air travel they take on private, company-owned jets, thus reducing their personal tax liability. One month later, Bessent wrote Sign the petition demanding that the Treasury Department close I looked into this and, while it is difficult to understand, it is quite real. What's happening is there is a dispute over how executives should estimate the value private air travel on their taxes, and it can be closed by an act of the Treasury Department instead of by an Act of Congress. The best explanation I was The Treasury Department formally declined a request from a group of Senate Democrats to change the tax rules governing how employees value personal use of employer-provided aircraft, preserving the Standard Industry Fare Level (SIFL) valuation method. In a letter dated August 17, 2026, Treasury’s Office of Legislative Affairs responded to an earlier July 24, 2026 letter from Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, Ed Markey, and Bernie Sanders, who had urged Treasury and the IRS to close what they characterized as a loophole allowing wealthy executives to substantially undervalue the taxable cost of personal travel on corporate jets. The senators referenced a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis showing that a flight between New York and Washington, D.C., with a fair market chartered value potentially exceeding $5,000, could be reported under the SIFL method at a value of roughly $236, producing a meaningful reduction in the executive’s imputed income and corresponding tax liability. Under Treasury Regulation § 1.61-21, employees generally must include in gross income the value of personal use of employer-provided aircraft as a fringe benefit, treated as wages for employment tax and information reporting purposes. Employees may value that use either at the amount it would cost to charter a comparable aircraft in an arm’s length transaction, or under the SIFL method, which multiplies published cents-per-mile rates by an aircraft weight-based multiple and adds a terminal charge. If your eyes glazed over reading this, I totally get it. So did mine. However, after reading it a few times, I think I figured it out, as I explain below. Sign the petition demanding that the Treasury Department close the private jet travel valuation Here is what you need to know: 1) You have to include the valuation of travel on personal or employer-provided aircraft in your income for tax purposes. 2) There are two different ways of calculating what that valuation is: something called the Standard Industry Fare Level (SIFL) or calculating the cost of charting a flight on a comparable aircraft. 3) The Standard Industry Fare Level is the method currently used by the Treasury Department. It results in a much lower valuation of the cost of air travel than calculating the cost of charting a flight on a comparable aircraft. As such, it results in a lower tax liability for wealthy executives. 4) A group of Democratic senators asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to switch away from the Standard Industry Fare Level, and instead adopt the method that involves calculating the cost of charting a flight on a comparable aircraft. This can apparently be done without Congress. 5) Bessent said no.