By: Diane Benjamin
Of course Illinois doesn’t have enough money! Springfield has no interest in a balanced budget and spending cuts. Democrats want more of your money and the Republicans may help them get it because they are desperate.
Your income tax could be going up 40%. In exchange you get a two-year property tax freeze, but that’s hardy enough to cover the expected $810 income tax increase per family. The assessed value of your property won’t be frozen, so property taxes can still increase.
Other minor reforms are included in discussions, but nothing is included that makes serious changes.
More people will flee, the tax base will continue to decline. Businesses will flee – corporations may be subject to massive tax increases too.
We’ve tried raising taxes before.
It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
Without major reforms to pensions, Medicaid, and the Chicago Public Schools – Illinois will never get out of the death spiral it is in.
Read more about what is being proposed here: http://www.bnd.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article128490034.html
The Illinois Senate is key to stopping the tax increases. Call your Senator today and tell them NO!
Senator Jason A. Barickman: (217) 782-6597
Senator Bill E. Brady: (217) 782-6216
Senator Chapin Rose: (217) 558-1006
See the complete Senate list here: http://www.ilga.gov/senate/
Two more articles with more information:
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Sadly, Illinois is in such a hole, a tax increase, PLUS deep cuts are the only out. It can’t be done on cuts alone.
There actually needs to be three things: spending cuts, tax increases, and regulatory reforms. The Illinois Policy (https://www.illinoispolicy.org) Institute has a lot of good information on the problems facing Illinois and the necessary reforms that are needed. I for one would be willing to pay more taxes if they were accompanied by real reforms. The “reforms” proposed in the senate budget are token things that, for the most part, won’t help very much.
The whole property tax freeze doesn’t affect the state because it gets no revenue from property taxes. Plus, like Diane mentioned, they can always raise assessed values.
Last I heard, Bill Brady was supporting the senate budget compromise.
This won’t get us any closer to climbing out of the hole unless there’s major cost cutting. We’re on the highway to hell.
Dan Brady was on WJBC this morning stating Madigan can be worked with as long as people understand they won’t get everything they want. Evidently Dan just wants another bad budget (like pre-Rauner) that led us down this path.
They just keep giving me more reasons to move somewhere else.
Taxed Enough Already…we cannot accept increased taxes because it makes us less competitive with other states. Most of our taxes are inflation adjusted already like property taxes and income taxes.