ORLANDO, Fla. — JetBlue Airways Corp. has been improperly avoiding as much as $800,000 a year in property taxes, according to new Orange County Property Appraiser Amy Mercado.
That’s enough money to pay the salaries of 11 public-school teachers.
At issue are three properties JetBlue leases at Orlando International Airport: an employee training center, a hotel and a maintenance hangar. JetBlue’s properties, Mercado said, appear to have been “inadvertently” left off of Orange County’s property tax rolls for years — and therefore exempt from paying the tax that funds everything from garbage collection to parks to police.
