COVID-19 Bill Provides $800M for Airport Concessionaire Rent and MAG Relief

The Biden administration's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan, which heads to the President’s desk for a signature, provides relief for airport concessionaires and car rental companies.

The plan includes $800 million to allow airports to provide relief from minimum annual guarantees (MAGs) and rents for airport concessionaires, including car rental companies. The plan calls for 80% of those funds to be set aside for small airport concessionaires, defined as those with no more than an average of $56 million gross receipts over previous three fiscal years.

The American Car Rental Association (ACRA) has been lobbying Congress continuously for MAG relief since the pandemic began. The latest relief amount falls short of the $3.64 billion requested in a Jan. 29 letter to Congress, though substantially more than the $200 million granted in the December 2020 bill. 

There are other parts of the relief bill that pertain to car rental operators:

The bill provides $10 billion in funding for state small business support programs and increases funds dedicated to the Paycheck Protection Program by $7.25 billion, a 1% increase over the $806.4 billion already dedicated to PPP funding.

The bill also extends the federal tax credit for paid sick and family leave through Sept. 30, 2021; and extends the federal employee retention tax credit through Dec. 31, 2021. It becomes a payroll tax credit after June 30, 2021.

The bill did not include an ACRA-backed provision, the Healthy Workplace Tax Credit, a federal payroll tax credit for cleaning and disinfecting supplies and expenses related to the COVID pandemic.