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A transcontinental flight from New York to Los Angeles on a Virgin America Inc. Airbus SE A320, would be charged about $3,900 in taxes, assuming the plane was 85 percent full and passengers paid the average fare calculated by the Transportation Department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The tax bill for a flight between the same cities on a privately owned Bombardier Inc. Global 6000, one of the world’s longest range corporate jets, would be about $525. That’s about 87 percent less than the airline flight.

The differences can be far greater if the private plane is a smaller model that burns less fuel.

A trip from Nashville, Tennessee, to Philadelphia by Southwest Airlines Co., which typically uses a Boeing Co. 737-700 on that route, would typically be charged more than $2,000 in taxes. An Embraer SA Phenom 100E, a smaller and more fuel efficient corporate jet, on the same leg would be assessed about $50, or roughly 2 percent of the Southwest plane.

Groups representing private aircraft, known as general aviation, have vigorously fought attempts to alter the current tax system, calling it equitable. Three main trade groups have spent a combined $56 million on lobbying on this issue and others in the past decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

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"I haven’t seen anything to suggest we are not paying a fair share," Ed Bolen, president and chief executive officer of the National Business Aviation Association, a Washington-based trade group representing more than 11,000 companies, said in an interview.

Business aircraft are an important segment of aviation tying rural areas to the rest of the U.S., and that sector supports $200 billion in economic activity each year, Bolen said. They impose fewer costs on the system than airliners because they often fly to less congested airports, he said. The group believes many costly elements of the air-traffic system were put in place to accommodate air carriers at large hub airports, and operators of smaller aircraft shouldn’t have to pay for them.

Mark Baker, president and chief executive officer of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which represents more than 300,000 private pilots, said the Bloomberg analysis was similar to the airline industry’s "false criticisms of general aviation."