A transportation agency on Monday filed a lawsuit alleging that United Airlines is falsely claiming to buy huge amounts of jet fuel out of a small, rural Illinois office that doesn’t even have a computer to avoid paying tens of millions of dollars in taxes in Chicago, where the purchases are allegedly being made.
The Regional Transportation Authority alleges United Aviation Fuels Corp., a subsidiary of United Airlines, has operated a “sham” office in the DeKalb County community of Sycamore since 2001 after reaching an agreement to pay the town more than $300,000 a year – a fraction of what it would have owed in sales taxes in Chicago and Cook County. “We buy fuel in Sycamore,” spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said in an email.
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