State Rep. Lou Lang’s progressive tax would hurt the middle class by making Illinois home to the second-highest small-business tax rate in the U.S.
Flawed property valuations and the process required to fix them are a cash cow for law firms, including those of House Speaker Mike Madigan, Chicago Alderman Ed Burke and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton.
Illinois has 859 local school districts – the fifth-most in the nation.
Illinois homeowners are struggling under the weight of the nation’s highest property-tax bills, according to a new analysis.
Replacing Illinois’ fair, flat income tax with a progressive tax would mean that some married couples with both spouses working would pay more in state income taxes than if they remained single.
In 2015 alone, Illinois state government redistributed more than $12 billion in income and other taxes to local governments. These financial shell games have created a needlessly complex system and make it difficult for local taxpayers to hold their governments accountable.
House Bill 696 would freeze property taxes across the state. Under the plan, local governments could still increase rates, but only with approval from voters. The bill doesn’t apply to home-rule governments, however. That’s no small exemption: 7.8 million Illinoisans live in a home-rule municipality such Chicago, Naperville or Peoria. This number also doesn’t account for Cook County, which is also home-rule, and would be exempted from this property-tax freeze.
Nearly 25 percent of Illinois school districts serve just one school, and over one-third of all school districts have fewer than 600 students.
Under Lang’s plan, Illinois’ top tax rate for noncorporate businesses would become 11.25 percent — the second-highest rate in the U.S.
A progressive tax would give Illinois politicians carte blanche to raise rates, which would end up sticking middle-class taxpayers with rates originally intended for “the rich” – all while chasing still more residents and businesses out of the state.
The Illinois House of Representatives voted against a proposal to freeze property taxes, denying much-needed relief to Illinoisans, who bear the third-highest property-tax burden in the nation.
The House speaker’s proposal to hike taxes on small businesses failed to garner the 71 necessary “yes” votes needed to pass out of the House on April 20.
The mayor’s plan to construct the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art includes more of the same bad policies that got Chicago into its fiscal crisis: a bid to borrow $1.2 billion and hike taxes on residents.
Total compensation for affected legislators and statewide officeholders equals about $1.3 million per month, according to the comptroller. On top of salaries, taxpayers also have to foot the bill for lawmaker pensions – in Illinois’ active legislators will each cost the state budget about $180,000 next year.