Recently it was announced that the U.S. Senate made a deal that would put thousands of FAA employees, and contractors, back to work.  This after it was revealed that the government was losing hundreds of million in tax revenues from the FAA shutdown.  Those loses far outweighed the savings from not having to pay the laid off FAA employees.

Now the Internal Revenue Service says they will not attempt to recover those lost airline ticket taxes.  IRS officials say they were ordered by the U.S. Senate not to collect taxes on ticket sales relating to flights made during the FAA shutdown.

Also, people who flew during the FAA shutdown, but bought their airline tickets before the FAA shutdown, will not get the taxes they paid refunded.  Since the airlines are not required to pay the IRS the taxes they collected, on tickets for flights that occurred during the FAA shutdown, essentially the airlines made some free money.