New York’s Proposed Helicopter Noise Tax Misses the Target

A proposed “noise tax” on helicopters in New York City is a well-intentioned response to public frustration, but it misfires by taxing the “idea” of noise rather than the actual sound.

If too much noise is the problem, then noise needs to be priced on a sliding scale. Instead, the proposed bill taxes it in a static, binary way: An aircraft either is quiet enough to avoid the tax or it isn’t.

The bill would levy the tax based on an occupancy or per-flight basis, charging $50 per seat or $200 per flight. The policy wouldn’t actually tax noise—it would tax the number of people sitting inside the noisy thing.

That’s a key distinction. If the goal is to reduce sound pollution, the tax should target sound itself, which would prompt operators to do what’s necessary to make an aircraft as quiet as possible. But the definition of “quiet” is fixed—if you’re 10 decibels below a federal standard, you’d be in the clear. Otherwise, you’d get taxed.

That standard misses the nuance of the problem. A noisy chopper interrupts a conversation, drowns out a phone call, shakes windowpanes, or wakes a toddler from a nap. A helicopter flying at noon over the harbor may not bother anyone, whereas the same aircraft hovering over Manhattan’s Riverside Park at 6 a.m. might bother everyone. Under the proposal’s framework, those two flights would be taxed the same—at least assuming they contained the same number of passengers.

An NYPD helicopter flies over the East River in New York City.

Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A well-calibrated externality tax is supposed to do two things: reflect the actual social harm caused and promote achievable behavioral changes to reduce that harm.

Congestion pricing is a good example of a policy at work in New York that reflects these goals—it varies by time of day, just like the net negative impact of an additional vehicle added to traffic. This motivates drivers to avoid driving at peak times.

The proposed policy doesn’t provide an incentive for helicopter operators to alter their routes to fly over less-populated areas or parts of the waterfront not used for recreation. There’s no penalty for hovering longer, and no surcharge for operating at dawn on a Sunday versus noon on a Wednesday.

The bill has been sent to the Assembly and is currently before the Ways and Means committee. If it is ultimately implemented, it might have a slight effect on the total number of flights but might not reduce the impact of those flights on the people most affected.

Noise pollution is inherently temporal and geographic. People don’t tally up total noise exposure at the end of the day like a credit card statement—they feel it in the moment. The same number of total decibels spread across less sensitive times and areas could produce far less public irritation. Conversely, knowing the seaplane interrupting your conversation paid $200 for the privilege to do so likely wouldn’t soothe your frustration.

Because the proposal doesn’t give partial credits, responsive operators that might consider tweaking their flight plans or switching to hybrid technologies have no reason to adapt unless they can fully cross the quiet aircraft threshold.

There’s nothing wrong with levying a tax to reduce the total number of aircraft in the skies around Manhattan. But if you want quieter skies, any sound policy must make being loud more expensive than being quiet.

This bill fails in the latter goal and is likely priced too low to achieve the former. It’s structured like a luxury tax and, functionally, it may serve only to make helicopter and seaplane rides a bit more expensive for business travelers and tourists.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Look no further than France to see a noise tax policy that actually does what it’s supposed to do. The amount owed varies based on the aircraft’s acoustic group, maximum takeoff weight, and takeoff time. A plane taking off at 11 p.m. with a high decibel rating pays more than a quieter aircraft taking off mid-day. The policy’s structure creates an incentive to make as little of an acoustic impact as possible.

By contrast, New York’s proposed bill is blunt and broad. It may slightly reduce helicopter traffic but does little more than improve optics. If New York truly wants to reduce aircraft noise, it needs to tax it—and to do so, it just needs to look across the Atlantic for a model.

Andrew Leahey is a tax and technology attorney, principal at Hunter Creek Consulting, and practice professor at Drexel Kline School of Law. Follow him on Mastodon at @andrew@esq.social

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