By Benjamin VanMetre
10/21/2013
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to increase the cigarette tax in Chicago by 75 cents per pack. The tax hike would increase the per-pack total to $7.42 — making Chicago the most expensive city in the nation in which to buy a pack of cigarettes. This tax hike is one of the plans Emanuel is considering to...
TAGS: Chicago, cigarette tax, Rahm Emanuel
By Paul Kersey
08/30/2013
Does giving workers the freedom to choose whether to join a union make a difference? A new report from the Mackinac Center – our sister think tank in Michigan – says yes, it does. Ball State University professor Michael Hicks teamed up with Mackinac’s Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive to produce a sophisticated analysis of employment, income...
By Hilary Gowins
06/21/2013
Remember when the state of Illinois said its new $1 cigarette tax would bring in $350 million in additional revenue? Unless this tax garners an additional $138 million in the next 10 days, these lofty projections are about to crash and burn. The cigarette tax hike, which took effect a year ago this month, is...
by Josh Dwyer According to a 2009 study conducted by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 42 percent of Michigan’s charter schools outperformed traditional public schools in math and 35 percent outperformed them in reading. Only 6 percent underperformed relative to their traditional public school counterparts in math and only 2 percent did so in...
Labor unions have a virtual lock on Illinois politics. Unionized government delivers services ever-less efficiently in rough proportion to its ever-increasing size.
TAGS: Michigan
By Hilary Gowins
03/01/2013
Health nuts and anti-tobacco fanatics, get out your streamers and champagne: Cook County’s new $1 per pack cigarette tax hike goes into effect today. Contrary to the so-called health conscious intentions of this tax’s creators, however, Cook County smokers will continue to buy cigarettes. Lots of them. Last year, Cook County brought in approximately $115 million...
By Benjamin VanMetre
10/25/2012
Since 2002, cigarette taxes increased 105 times across the country. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle wants to make it 106. To help fill Cook County’s $267.5 million budget shortfall, Preckwinkle has proposed increasing the per-pack tax on cigarettes by $1. The tax hike is only expected to bring in about $25 million in new revenue. Preckwinkle’s new money...
By Jonathan Ingram
04/16/2012
It looks like Gov. Quinn may be pinning his hopes of finding Medicaid savings by raising cigarette taxes. This isn’t the first time Gov. Quinn has floated his $1-per-pack tax hike on cigarettes. So I was glad to see that Sen. Dale Righter and Rep. Patti Bellock, members of the Medicaid reform working group, have voiced their opposition to...
Since 2009 the Illinois General Assembly has tried over and over again to pass a tobacco tax which will unfairly target small business owners and the poor.
By Mark Cavers
01/31/2011
Will more taxes and rosy revenue projections solve our fiscal mess?
