That big bump in the night? It was the sound of a massive new tax increase dropping on the backs of Illinois citizens and businesses.
Not long after midnight, Wednesday morning, mere hours before the newly elected legislature was to be sworn into office, the state’s lame-duck legislature voted to increase the personal income tax by a whopping 67 percent and the business income tax by nearly 50 percent.
That’s lame, all right.
Governor Pat Quinn, who had campaigned in favor of a smaller increase, will sign the bigger tax hike. “Our fiscal house was burning,” he said in its defense.
Is the fire now out?
Well, there sure is a lot of smoke, and where there’s smoke, there’s . . . a lot of people making a quick exit.
Remember, people can vote with their feet. “Leaving Illinois,” a study by the Illinois Policy Institute, points out that between 1991 and 2009 Illinois lost one resident every ten minutes.
That’s $16.9 billion in lost state and local tax revenue.
So Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was quick to offer a safer haven. “In these challenging economic times while Illinois is raising taxes, we are lowering them.”
As William Brodsky, chief executive of CBOE Holdings Inc, argues, “Merely throwing tax dollars at a broken system, without overhauling the expense side of the ledger, compounds the problem. . .” Bemoaning Illinois’ lost tax advantage in attracting business, Brodsky remarked, “They don’t come here for the weather.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “A Chill Hits Illinois”
This is why Marx said that the revolution had to occur everywhere at once.
Else the people with the money would just leave.
Maybe a wall….
http://dissembler.blogtownhall.com
We now have a fantastic opportunity to see the leftist idea of massive taxes to solve problems, at work. Illinois will be the example for all to look at. The results will show just how smart imposing draconian taxes on the public is, when it comes to solving the financial problems that state & this nation face.
I suspect, the people of Illinois will be stunned by that “sucking sound” as many w/ wealth leave Illinois, in a rush.
In each & every state w/ high taxes, the population decreases as those w/ wealth make an exit for low tax locations. I suggest that this is exactly what will happen in Illinois.
The comical part, if there is one, will be the reaction by big government, high tax liberals who will be astonished they could not gin up enough revenues to pay their bills. If the folk w/ money leave, so too does their income and that means, you cannot tax something that is not there!
Whoops!
Businesses and wealthy people are moving away from America too.
We moved our farming operations to Brazil years ago.
Contrary to pundits’ claims, that we moved to lower labor cost, actually the principal motives were the huge cost of complying with American bureaucracy, the cost of keeping the trial lawyer vultures at bay and the highest taxes in the world.
Labor costs in Brazil are about the same as in California yet legal costs and compliance alone are higher than that of expensive seeds, fertilizer and pest control. Now we are competitive globally and selling to 27 countries, successful beyond our wildest dreams.
Correction: Yet legal costs and compliance alone are higher in America than that of expensive seeds, ferilizer and pest control in Brazil.