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.
The top 18 percent of Illinois taxpayers cover more than 60 percent of the state’s income taxes, and the state’s millionaires pay 15 percent of Illinois’ income taxes.
SB 3267 would introduce electronic driver tracking, and create a behemoth bureaucracy to keep tabs on Illinois drivers and figure out how to process tax credits.
Illinois needs a combination of constitutional and statutory changes to put and keep the state on sound fiscal footing and allow it to pay its providers and better prepare for emergencies.
The Illinois attorney general – House Speaker Mike Madigan’s daughter – could play a major role in whether state lawmakers will pass a budget Illinoisans can afford.
Illinois' 859 local school districts consume nearly two-thirds of the $27 billion in local property taxes collected across the state each year.
The Illinois House has passed a bill to prohibit charging late fees to vehicle owners who renew their registration late due to the secretary of state’s suspension of mailed reminders.
Illinoisans must work from Jan. 1 until April 29 to pay the taxes they owe to federal, state and local governments.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has claimed that Chicago students are discriminated against under the state's education funding formula. But the numbers show the opposite: Chicago has received more than its fair share of education funding from the state.
A new 30-cent-per-gallon tax hike would make Illinois gas taxes the highest in the nation by far, and pour more money into a broken system.
Budget gridlock in Springfield caused the Illinois secretary of state’s office to suspend mailing vehicle-registration-renewal reminders in October 2015; as a result, during the first three months of 2016, the state took in $2.7 million more in fees for late license-plate renewal than it did during the same period in 2015.
Creating a tax increment financing district around the Lathrop Homes redevelopment will ensure that 100 percent of property-tax revenue generated on the site will go to a city-run slush fund.
Since 1990, the average property-tax bill in Illinois has grown more than three times faster than the state's median household income.
In an effort to shore up pension debt, Chicago officials in 2014 adopted a pension-reform package that included raising the telephone tax. Though the Illinois Supreme Court struck down these changes, the tax hike remains.