Virgin America promotes federal tax evasion through social media

With talks snagged on an FAA re-authorization bill, leading to a partial FAA shutdown, Virgin America immediately took to Twitter and Facebook to promote "tax evasion," or at least flights with fewer federal taxes.

Here's an image of the Virgin America promotion on Twitter:

The airline also used the Virgin America's Facebook page to herald "Evade Taxes, Take Flight."

The federal tax reductions, as presented by Virgin America, kicked in at 12:01 a.m. PDT July 23.

"We’ll stop collecting some federal excise taxes starting at 12:01 a.m. PDT, through the time Congress comes to a resolution," Virgin America states. "Until Congress decides otherwise, tickets sold after July 22, 2011, won’t include these federal excise taxes."

Here's a list of discounted one-way flights minus some of the usual federal excise taxes, as presented on the airline's website:

With some blackout dates, the travel must occur Aug. 23 through Nov. 16, the airline says.

If Virgin American can get away without charging federal excise taxes while the Congressional logjam is in place, presumably other airlines will do likewise.

But, Virgin America was very fast out of the social media gate to get the word out.