Really sad news. I had hoped to blog about this proposal to make Illinois income tax more progressive - and I regret I didn’t do it sooner. People making over $250,000 a year in income can afford a higher tax than those making $25,000 - and it’s no secret that in areas like education and infrastructure Illinois suffers from a lack of funding. Dan Johnson-Weinberger deserves credit for leading the local blog charge on the issue.
WurfWhile
Insight - Foresight - Hindsight
Comments 2
It doesn’t make it progressive, it just would have made it stupid.
State tax bill if you made $249,000 = $7,470
State tax bill if you made $250,000 = $15,000
That last 1,000 is a killer. It was the same threshold for single folks as married couples.
Major problems with this….
– Illinois does not exempt capital gains from home sales, so if you lived in Naperville for 30 years and sell your house, congratulations you pay a 6% rate on all of it.
– The whole fund idea, we have seen how the state sweeps funds. If anyone thinks this would just be extra money for education and we wouldn’t move money out of education to pay for other stuff is living in a dream world.
It classic class warfare, hey lets tax other people (my TOP tax plan).
If we want to talk about a real changes to the tax system in Illinois that’s fine. But basic the tax system should not be based on the idea of ‘what you can afford’ but what government needs and work from there.
Also keep in mind people who make more already pay more.
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 8:18 am ¶Hi OneMan,
Thank you for the comment!
Is/was HJRCA 42 the perfect bill? No. A more graduated increase would likely have been better, as well as one accommodating married filings better, to take your first point(s). Was it better than the status quo? I think so. There’s no doubt we need more money for education in schools (and particularly more money that isn’t property tax based) - this ideally could have been part of the solution.
Posted 16 Apr 2008 at 10:03 pm ¶Post a Comment