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.

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.