Billionaires like the DeVos family will also benefit from the Big Beautiful Bill just for owning private jets

The Big Beautiful Bill, which is only beautiful for the Capitalist Class and government entities like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will deeply hurt millions of people in the US, especially those who rely on Medicaid.

There is another aspect of the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) that hasn’t received much attention, one which will benefit billionaire families like the DeVos family. 

According to inequality.org, the BBB:

“Includes a massive tax subsidy for private jet buyers. Instead of corporations deducting the purchase of their jets over several years of their useful life, the BBB includes 100 percent “bonus depreciation” in the year of purchase. 

For example, a corporation purchasing a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire $50 million from their taxes in the year of the purchase, rather than spreading the deduction over many years. This amounts to a massive taxpayer subsidy, as ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers.

From our IPS research on private jets, we know that regular taxpayers and commercial air travelers subsidize the high-flying excess of private jet owners. In the U.S. private jets use seven percent of the airspace but only contribute 0.6 percent of the cost of using it.

As wealth has concentrated into the vaults of the ultra-wealthy, the demand for private jets is surging. Every billionaire appears to need one or two. As a result, private jets are one of the largest and fastest growing sources of air and climate pollution. In 2023, private jets emitted  19.5 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a 25 percent increase over 2013 levels.”

The DeVos Family and their fleet of jets

It is always difficult to find out details about the wealth of the DeVos family, primarily because they don’t believe in full transparency and because they have diversified their wealth and assets in such a way as to make it difficult to track.

There was an interesting article from Business Insider in 2018, with a headline that read, Education secretary Betsy DeVos owns a fleet of 12 private jets and 4 helicopters. In that article it states: 

According to Forbes, the DeVos family owns a fleet of 12 private jets — 1 Boeing Business Jet, 5 Gulfstream G550’s, 1 Gulfstream G450, 2 Bombardier Challenger 350’s, 3 Cessna Citation CJ4’s — and four helicopters. 

We also know that while she was the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos used her own private jets to travel as Education Secretary, rather than using commercial planes.

Then there is the fact that the global corporation that Rich DeVos founded with Jay Van Andel, the Amway Corporation, also has a fleet of private jets and other planes, with their own hangar at the Kent County Airport. 

The Amway corporate jets get even more use than the private jets owned by the DeVos family, primarily because the Amway jets are used by more people, particularly the people who are near the top of earners in their notorious pyramid scheme. In addition, the Amway Corporation has partnered with other commercial airline companies to offer exclusive trips to Amway distributors for Amway conventions. One example was the partnership with the Emirates, the world’s largest international airline, which transported over 6,500 distributors and company representatives to Dubai.

Then there is the Charter School scheme that Dick DeVos runs, the West Michigan Aviation Academy. The West Michigan Aviation Academy, located at the Kent County Airport, is a school designed to create more pilots, but it also encourages more private jet/plane ownership and use. In the past, Dick DeVos has complained about his Charter School not getting enough public funding.

Therefore, on top of the fact that the DeVos family:

• Makes massive political contributions to GOP candidates/politicians, which adopt policies that do tremendous harm to working class families, immigrants, the LGBTQ community and BIPOC people in general;
• Uses their foundations to funnel millions to far right groups like Focus on the Family or think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute or the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

The DeVos family and the Amway Corporation – just on the matter of air travel – emit at least 10 times more pollutants than anyone else who books a flight from the Kent County Airport. Lastly, besides travel for pleasure, the DeVos family uses their private jets to travel to places to meet with other disgustingly rich people to figure out new ways to expand their wealth and to exploit and oppress more of the world’s population, while creating more pollution and perpetuating Climate Change. Reason #31 for why we should have nothing but contempt for the most powerful family in West Michigan, the DeVos family.