Jeff Bezos got hit with a notice for about $244,000 in overdue L.A. County taxes and fees on his luxury jet.
A private aircraft that, according to flight tracking database JetSpy, is linked to Rihanna racked up a roughly $104,000 bill for unpaid taxes.
Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Rams, got dinged about $290,000 for two private planes that JetSpy says belong to him.
L.A. County Assessor Jeff Prang is on a mission: Find the ultrawealthy jet owners who failed to pay taxes on their luxury planes and make them cough up.
Private jet owners in California have to pay an annual 1% property tax on their plane. Airplanes are taxed in the place that they are “habitually situated” when not in flight. That means it doesn’t matter where a plane is registered or where the owner lives, but rather where the plane has spent the most time on the ground. If they fail to pay, they get charged a penalty fee.
This year, the assessor’s office sent out hundreds of bills to plane owners that the office said failed to pay the tax on time. The revenues are expected to pad the county coffers with an extra $38 million, while infuriating many of the region’s richest residents who insist they had no idea they needed to pay.
“One thing that is very clear is that private aircraft owners in Los Angeles County, and, likely, across California, have been very successful in evading assessment and taxes,” said Prang, who won reelection in June. “We knew that we were missing things. Obviously, the details here show that we missed a lot.”
The Times obtained the list of jets owing taxes through a public records request and then linked them to a star-studded assortment of celebrities, business tycoons and tech titans using JetSpy.
Mitch Williamson, a spokesperson for JetSpy, said the company determines who owns and operates planes registered to opaque limited liability companies, trusts and holding entities through public and private databases, aircraft filings, plane transmissions and flight pattern analysis and said the ownership data for the planes highlighted by The Times were accurate.
Nike co-founder Phil Knight, who owns a jet with a custom N1KE tail number, received a notice for about $89,000 in taxes and fees that were supposed to be paid in 2022. An aircraft that, according to JetSpy, is owned by retired baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez, had a roughly $11,000 bill for 2025. “South Park” co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone owed about $95,000.
Judy Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy, got two bills for her jet from 2022 and 2025. Sheindlin says the plane, operated through Her Honor Inc., was based in Florida and she didn’t realize she had to pay taxes for the jet in L.A. County, where she filmed her TV show.
She said she paid the tax, along with the penalty, as soon as she got the bill.
“Begrudgingly, but it was cheaper than having my law firm … deal with it because they sit on the phone for hours with these numbnuts,” she said in a brief phone call. “Have you ever had to get your television fixed? You sit on the phone for two hours. It’s worse trying to get to the assessor’s office. Impossible.”
Sheindlin said she considered fighting the bills, but figured her feistier days were behind her.
“There are plenty of billionaires who say I’m going to get into this because it’s not right,” she said. “I’m not going to stress myself if I don’t have to.”
Plane owners are required to self-report, meaning the owner must disclose the plane and its value to the assessor. If a jet spends a large chunk of time in another state, the assessor will reduce the tax based on how much time it spent outside of the county. The assessor’s office staff said they’re braced for a slew of appeals from out-of-state residents.
Most representatives for the celebrity jet owners contacted by The Times declined to comment on the record. Many said they never knew they needed to pay in L.A. County, but paid promptly upon receiving the bill. Representatives for Rihanna, Rodriguez, and Kroenke did not respond to inquiries about the planes.
The two planes linked to Kroenke are registered to a company he manages, according to Montana business registration records.
The jet linked to Rodriguez bears the logo for A-Rod Corp, Rodriguez’s investment firm, and is registered to Dora 13, a limited liability company (Dora is ARod backward and he wore number 13 for the Yankees).
The plane linked to Rihanna frequently flies to Bridgetown, Barbados, the singer’s hometown, and recent trips align with her public appearances — an April 23 trip to Mumbai to launch her beauty brand in the city, a Dec. 4 trip to Miami for Art Basel and a June 28, 2025, trip to Brussels for the “Smurfs” world premiere.
Antonio Castro, chief appraiser for the assessor’s office, said some of the owners probably received notices of the new assessment, but no final bills because staff ran out of time. Owners who owed money but did receive final bills by the June 30 deadline include Bezos and Knight, according to the assessor’s list.
Several of the entities that never paid the tax are based in other states and the planes made frequent trips to and from California, according to data from JetSpy. Those included jets linked to Michael Smith, the billionaire chairman of natural gas export facility Freeport LNG, and several media companies, including Fox, CBS and IHeartMedia.
Other luxury planes were linked to companies based in L.A. County, including a plane worth $46 million tied to Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Beverly Hills. The firm did not respond to questions from The Times about the plane.
In the past, Prang said, some private jet owners have dodged the tax by hiding their planes in hangars at private airports. Others, he said, register their planes in states such as Montana that don’t charge property tax on personal planes.
More than a dozen states levy personal property taxes on private jets, which make tempting targets for tax assessors due to their high value. California counties assess personal property taxes on planes, boats, and business equipment though not cars.
Slipping through the cracks became more difficult last year when Prang’s office obtained airplane location data showing there were hundreds of planes often situated in the county that weren’t paying taxes. Staff said the office sifted through the data for 2022 and 2025 and are still working on 2023 and 2024.
The data, known as ADS-B Out, is considered one of the most accurate ways to determine a plane’s location, and the Federal Aviation Administration required jets to adopt it by 2020 to help air traffic controllers avoid collisions. The change proved to be a boon for local tax assessors, which had a clearer vantage point into the planes with unpaid taxes in their backyard.
The use of the data to bring in money for local government has proved controversial. Louisiana recently banned local officials from reviewing it. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told lawmakers in May that he and his staff “frown on the concept.” Republicans, led by U.S. Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.), have tried to limit the ability of tax officials to look at the data, saying it invades pilots’ privacy and acts “as a deterrent for pilots to equip their aircraft with this potentially life-saving technology.”
Prang said he believed the privacy concerns were “just a made up excuse.”
“These corporate jet owners flex their muscle to try to get special treatments and privileges that most of the rest of us can’t,” he said. “They’re coming up with this one argument that I just find absurd.”
As of now, Prang says, he hasn’t heard much outrage locally among newly taxed jet owners.
“I’ve been waiting for that,” he says.
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