This session, a bill was introduced to the Illinois General Assembly that would impose draconian regulations on Uber and Lyft’s ridesharing programs. This legislation was crafted by the cab unions with the intention of drastically increasing regulation so as to maintain monopoly control over the urban transportation market. In addition to stifling the free market,...
Illinois’ 10 largest metropolitan areas continue to be plagued with joblessness, according to a release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This news comes on the heels of no monthly improvement in the state jobless rate, which at 8.7 percent is 2 points higher than the national average. Illinois has the second highest jobless rate...
Gov. Pat Quinn is in a bind. He’s being asked to sign a Chicago pension bill that he knows has no real reforms and no way to pay for itself. By signing the bill, Quinn will give Mayor Rahm Emanuel his blessing to raise Chicago property taxes by $750 million over five years. But that’s...
On April 8, activists arrived unannounced at the Springfield office of the Illinois Policy Institute to protest our leadership in unmasking an unfair progressive tax grab. They left behind this letter. The following is our response. *** Dear Revs. Sharp, Coulter and Knox: Thank you for visiting our Springfield office earlier this week, and for...
The taxi lobby has been trying to get Chicago to destroy ridesharing services like UberX and Lyft, but it hasn’t worked because the services are just too popular in the city. So now the taxi industry has turned to Springfield for help crushing the competition, and it looks like state legislators might be about to...
The price of gas in the U.S. is going up, and Chicago is leading the charge. NBC Chicago reported that the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline has risen 5 cents in the past two weeks. And Chicagoans are paying $4.18 per gallon of gas on average. That’s the highest price per gallon...
A progressive income tax would hit Illinois’ businesses community hard. That’s because S corporations and most partnerships “pass-through” their income to the individual owners of those businesses, meaning their profits are taxed at the state’s personal income tax rate. That’s on top of the 1.5 percent replacement tax these businesses pay. State Sen. Don Harmon...
By any measure, the Affordable Care Act has been disastrous. But you would not know it by the administration’s fist-pumping and ball-spiking. The trumpeted headline dominating the news coverage is that the ObamaCare goal of 7 million enrollments was met. But this is horribly misleading. The reality is that the administration has, for months, refused...
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension proposal, which is headed to Gov. Quinn’s desk, does very little to reform how Chicago’s pension systems work. Under his plan, workers and taxpayers would experience more of the same tired game, except they would be expected to contribute more to keep it afloat. But if Emanuel is going to rely...
A key tenet of the current Chicago pension reform proposal, which is headed to Gov. Quinn’s desk, is an Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund-style funding mechanism that seeks to guarantee that pension payments are made to Chicago’s funds each year. The mechanism allows the state to divert millions of dollars away from the city and into Chicago pension...
Last week Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan proudly announced a settlement that would allegedly ban the production of caffeinated alcoholic beverage called Four Loko. In a press release highlighting details from a 22-page settlement joined by 19 other states, the city of San Francisco and Four Loko’s Chicago-based maker, Phusion Products, Madigan boasts the agreement...
About three weeks ago, we sounded a warning about House Bill 5485, which would allow arbitrators to set minimum staffing levels in fire departments throughout Illinois. Since then, news outlets throughout Illinois have been taking note of this bill, pointing out to readers that it would take Illinois in the wrong direction by making unions...
State Sen. Don Harmon’s progressive tax hike proposal would be a massive tax increase on Illinois businesses. A recent Tax Foundation report shows that 61 percent of Illinois employers are pass-through entities – meaning their earnings are taxed at the personal income tax rate instead of the corporate income tax rate. Examples of pass-through entities...
The Illinois Senate passed Senate Bill 2776 to lower the cost to create a Limited Liability Company to $39 from $500. This piece of legislation, which rightfully received bipartisan support, will take effect immediately upon receiving Gov. Pat Quinn’s signature. LLC fees are unnecessary and harm low-income entrepreneurs. In fact, LLC fees function like a...