by Amanda Griffin-Johnson Today, the Tax Foundation released their annual report on the Tax Freedom Day for each of the fifty states. The Tax Freedom Day measures the number of days Americans have to work to pay for all their annual taxes at the federal, state and local level. The national Tax Freedom Day for 2011 is...

by Brian Costin With election day rapidly approaching, and early voting already underway, citizens in a number of Cook County communities are in the process deciding on 10 property tax hike referendums. A 2006 reform to state laws intended to give voters an accurate estimate of how a property tax hike referendum would affect them....

Following the Senate Republicans’ press conference Thursday, Illinois Statehouse News released an interview with the governor’s budget spokesperson, Kelly Kraft.  In her interview, Kelly paints a doomsday picture of what Illinois would be like after cutting $6 billion from the budget. Kelly states the governor has already made dramatic budget cuts, but we know that’s not true....

by Collin Hitt The Illinois Policy Institute released Budget Solutions 2012 on Tuesday, March 8. To date, it is the only detailed, balanced, sustainable budget plan that has been published on state government general fund spending. The plan contains several recommendations for education and Medicaid spending, but it also includes one idea that was completely new and...

In February, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn proposed an unbalanced budget that relied on hefty tax increases and $8.75 billion in borrowing – not to mention, increased overall state spending by $1.7 billion. If followed, Gov. Quinn’s budget will prompt Illinois to run recurring, annual deficits of nearly $3 billion by the year 2016. By the...

by Mark Cavers For months, the Institute and others have been warning that passing the Amazon Tax bill would force even more jobs out of our state. Government policies do not take place in a bubble, they have real life impacts. Yesterday Governor Quinn signed the Amazon Tax into law. This effectively cuts off the revenue streams for numerous Illinois based companies that...