48 Comments - Leroy - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:32 am: I don’t support the first one, since I buy groceries and medical services. I DO favor the second one, since I am not retired. Why should retired people not pay their fair share? Rich retired fat-cats are getting a free ride. - Bill - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:44 am: This is just another feeble attempt to divide the citizens of Illinois over who will have to bear the burden of financing state services. The right wing press, including the Herald, will stop at nothing to help big corporations abdicate their social responsibility. Now, they are taking a swipe at seniors and the poor who must spend most of their income to eat and get medicine. Yesterday, it was school children and educators. Tomorrow it could be health care workers. Close the loopholes for big business. Tax their gross receipts. Make them live up to their responsibilities and leave the seniors and the less fortunate among us alone. - Objective Dem - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:11 am: We should not be taxing food and drugs. People need them to survive and they are the ultimate regressive tax. I think it is fine to have a soft-drink tax or a junk food tax, if set up in a way that can be implemented fairly. I need to know more about taxing the pensions, IRAs, and social security before making a real judgement. But being elderly doesn’t equate to being poor and I could see some taxes on pensions or IRAs. - Cassandra - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:27 am: There must be some reason why seniors were exempted from the income tax in the first place. And since many current Illinois residents will someday be senior Illinois residents if they stay on here in retirement, this is not just an issue that applies to current seniors. I’d want to hear the reasoning behind the current state income tax exemption for seniors before I supported any decision to dump it. I thought some version of 750 did include taxing retirement income at some level. Maybe the Senate version? We haven’t heard much from the AARP about that. Perhaps they don’t think it’s a serious possibility. In any case, seniors, like everybody else in Illinois, should stay alert as our legislators thrash around looking for ways to get money and shove something through at the last minute. Seniors could be among the losers. - Plutocrat03 - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:33 am: Our leaders frequently speak of fairness and heir progressive outlook on the welfate of our citizens. First, taxing food and drugs. The poor and working class spend a much larger percentage of their incomes of food and drugs than the wealthy. Its a no brainer leave it alone Second, retirement income. As long as there is a floor where the ‘poor’ do not have to pay taxes on their retirement income stream, it makes sense to collect taxes on wealthy taxpayers. Not to beat a dead horse, but when governmental workers are routinely collecting 6 figure pensions, it is time to ask them to pay their fair share. - RMW Stanford - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:45 am: Bill, It’s funny you talking about the press taking swipes at the poor and elderly when they are one of the groups that are going to be the most hurt by the the Gross Receipts Tax as the increases in prices that it will cause will have a disproportionate affect on them. I support the first tax break and for retirement income, after that income reaches a certain level they should be taxed. - Ghost - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:55 am: I would support ending the tax free status on food sales. I re-call when they repelaed this sales tax. Most people did not even notice. Since most retiress are on fixed incomes, many struggling as it is, I would keep retirement income tax exempt. Particuarly since people have planned retirments and investment based on this fact. - Dooley Dudright - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:56 am: Lay off the dispicably regressive sales tax. Ramp up the income tax. Our federal income tax is progressive: the more you make, the greater the percentage you pay. On the other hand — our state income tax rate is a flat percentage. Therein lies the prescription: move from flat rate to progression. Make it real simple and adopt the federal thresholds and break points, with one exception: no tax for incomes under $25,000. In short — make those who are better off pay more. Just like the feds. - Frank Booth - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 11:05 am: Cassandra, your questions about HB750 and retirement income are addressed in the story Rich links to. … A couple of years ago, the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability proposed overhauling the state’s tax system, and among the many changes was a plan to begin taxing pensions and retirement income over $75,000 a year. The backlash was quick, and that provision was dumped quickly - but not before it essentially made the proposal politically radioactive. Senior opposition forced lawmakers such as state Sen. Susan Garrett, a Lake Forest Democrat, to pull their names from the sponsor’s list. - VanillaMan - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 11:27 am: Lets stop thinking like old-fashioned socialists and start thinking like 21st Century citizens, shall we? First off, why are all of you so easily convinced that a good solution is allowing state government to take more of your money? Stop being so lazy and obsolete! The State of Illinois has no moral imperative to a percentage of your paychecks. You seemed to have grown so comfortable with the idea of having bureaucrats build bloated fiefdoms that take from you, you are not questioning the reasoning behind their existence anymore. Most of these social programs are dreadfully inefficient, poorly ran, corrupt and ineffective. The real work is to demand their extermination and reform. The lazy way out is to demand someone else cough up more money to feed these silly programs. Bill is unicorn hunting. He believes the answer is to stick it to businesses, whom he believes is some kind of parasitic organization on the body politic. Nonsense! Businesses don’t pay taxes. They are not real people. When you tax businesses, you are just taxing yourself and being stupid at the same time. Talk about obsolete thinking, Bill and others like him are still stuck in 1974 mentality and need to discover the new age we are living in. Even France woke up this month and are smelling the coffee. A solution to our problems here in Illinois is demanding that our rotten lazy butt politicians cut back on spending our money. They won’t do it, and instead pretend that every dollar wasted by our bloated bureaucracies is justified. They don’t want to make enemies, so they just prattle on about how this program or that program needs to be funded. They would rather argue over WHO pays more, instead of arguing WHY we should be taking citizen’s money and spending it on their pet projects. Demand better. The fewer taxes we pay, the better off we are. The fewer social programs we have, the more responsible our citizens are forced to be. Lets stop going down the path of socialism, and start doing what works. Cut government spending. Period. - RMW Stanford - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 11:36 am: Bill is unicorn hunting. He believes the answer is to stick it to businesses, whom he believes is some kind of parasitic organization on the body politic. Thats a good point and even businesses that are not paying any corporate income tax still produce benefits for the state and state revenue. They provide jobs which are sources of personal income tax and sales tax revenue, property taxes and they directly and indirectly increase the income of other businesses, many of which do pay corporate income tax. Do we need to examine the loopholes in the State’s tax system, yes we do but this let’s stick it to business attitude that the Governor, Emil Jones and other have is bad for the state. We should be looking at controlling spending and cutting back on unneeded programs, not adding new ones. - steve schnorf - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 11:38 am: It was silly to remove the sales tax on food and meds. How many times does it need to be said? The broader the base and the lower the tax rate the better the tax. Deal with the regressiveness with the EITC, so people making $100,000 a year don’t benefit from the exemption. Of course retirement income should be taxed (that portion which was not already taxed when earned). To make this happen there would probably need to be some minimum threshold established. - ChampaignDweller - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 11:59 am: I don’t support either. Giving more to the corruption that is our current State government only encourages them to continue down the path to destruction. This government will never be satisfied, nor will it ever live within its budget. As long as the Governor continues to pander to people with unfunded entitlements, we will have a problem. The answer isn’t more taxes; the answer is less spending. - Team Sleep - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:04 pm: More tax, more tax, more tax. What is it with people? Why would I want to pay more tax? For the “betterment” of society? Not with the leaders we have in place. The money will just be wasted or at the very least will be of no benefit to me. Retirees do not make a lot of money - and that is especially true for people dependent only on Social Security. If you are taxed for 45 years of your life, why should you be taxed for the rest of your existence? For food and medicine, I don’t care either way. One’s grocery bills would not be impacted that much, and most copays already are at a flat level. One thing I would support would be an increase in “sin tax” and a new “sin tax” for fatty foods. Make the sales tax for McD’s or Burger King or Del Taco fifteen to twenty cents. The food would still be cheap BUT the difference would be staggering. - Team Sleep - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:07 pm: I do agree with Steve on the treshhold. A widow who is on a social security chcek should not be taxed, but a retired exec who’s living on four or five 401(k) plans should be taxed. That’s fair. - i d - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:07 pm: No new or higher taxes. No new programs. - PalosParkBob - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:19 pm: Of course, tax increases aren’t necessary if serious reforms of the gold plated state pension systems, Medicaid reform to managed care programs and school spending salary/benefit increases are limited by law to district revenue increases, but if the legislators are going to raise income taxes anyway, perhaps the highest taxed should be those who benefit the most from government spending. For example, pensions cannot be decreased from current levels by the Illinois constitution, but there’s nothing preventing taxing excessive state pension payments and “double dipping” government pensions. Say anything over the maximum Social Security pension disbursement would be taxed at progressively higher rates, so that someone receiving a six figure per year pension from SURS or TRS would have a bracket reaching 10%. Retirees receiving multiple pensions from different governmental bodies have the second pension taxed at double the single pension rate. Individual contributions made to 401Ks and TRS pensions would not be taxed, only the prorated portion of taxpayer/employer contributions. I’d love to hear the howl from IFT, IEA, and SEIU (and Bill) if that was proposed! - BIG R.PH. - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:46 pm: AMEN VANILLA MAN!! AS to food taxes, it is already being levied but at a lower rate. As to Prescription Drug taxes, it is already being levied (at a lower rate) but the pharmacies pay it not the consumer. Lucky us, we already have our own GRT. Must cut waste in the schools!! Go to any Public school and count up the number of “non-esential” personnel for all of the unfunded mandated programs. For the best example, see the E. St. Louis School District. After removing Federal oversight they hired 140 more people. Many of them related to school board members. This in a district with declining enrollment, below acceptable test scores and a declining population. Let’s pour more money into the schools. They need it! BS - A Citizen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:55 pm: There is a vary significant number of state human services program managers that essentially contract with consulting companies and private service providers to perform their state paid jobs. Either eliminate the program or tax the state employees at 95% since they are not doing the work. It amounts to pinstripe ghost payrolling and constitutes a huge waste. The practice is extremely widespread and accepted methodology especially in federally funded programs. - one of the 35 - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 12:57 pm: I also agree with Vanilla Man. State Government is not entitled to an increase in taxes other than the normal inflationary increase which takes place as the economy and earnings grow. Does anyone in Illinois trust this Governor and GA to spend our tax dollars wisely? If not, why give them more of our money to expend on well intentioned, but poorly run programs and initiatives? - (618) Democrat - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 1:50 pm: NO to these taxes on working men and women. YES to Governor Blagojevich for standing up for working men and women in our state and saying no to these kind of taxes. - GA Watcher - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 2:05 pm: I agree with Steve Schnorf. State government could sure use you now, Steve. - A Citizen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 2:36 pm: I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that our state government has become an addict. The drug of choice, of course, is money. As with other drug addictions, the level of ingestion must increase constantly to sustain the same level of affect. It is time, way past time, for an intervention by the loving citizens to initiate a weaning off of this seductive addiction. NO new taxes, no messing around with “extending” taxes to previously not taxed things/persons. It’s time for the state to enter into a recovery program and get clean . . . and lean. The apparent desperation with which the gov and the legislators are pursuing a tax (of any form) increase is a sad symptom of how sick they have become. Citizens ! Just Say NO !!! - Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 3:25 pm: Politically, taxing retirement incomes is about as dead as the GRT, I don’t care where you set the minimum threshold. As for the grocery and pharmaceutical tax, a smart politician should think about eliminating this sales tax completely in exchange for expanding the tax base to include consumer services. Politically, I’d rather be the guy who voted to tax movie rentals than the guy who voted against eliminating the sales tax on life-saving medicines. - Little Egypt - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 3:41 pm: Bill, I can’t believe this but you’re singing my song. - Larry Mulholland - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 3:46 pm: I would not support the elimination of either of the two tax LAWS. It has been proven over and over again that if you allow someone keep more of their own income, they will reinvest or otherwise spend the money. Thereby growing our economy and personal income of others. Similarly, Illinois Government has proven over and over again that they will spend every dollar they take in. And as usual, squander major portions of any budget on the bureaucracy and other wasteful spending. (Insert any notorious contracts or ineffective & glamorous programs here.) Illinois has spending problem… - Arthur Andersen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 4:08 pm: LE, hard to believe, but I’m with Bill today as well, except I’m lukewarm on the GRT, especially as proposed. I’m not lukewarm about the latest missive from ol’ Pee Pee Bob, who thinks the State budget can be balanced by hacking away at those overpaid educators’ salary and benefits. (AA thinks Pee Pee got paddled one time too many in Jr. High gym class..) More absurd tripe. The most recent TRS annual report indicates that less than one percent of their retirees are earning a pension greater than $100,000. Even if these pensions were cut in half or taxed at 50%, the grand total to reduce the deficit is around $50 million, or about 2 percent of the need. Teachers (and university educators) in Illinois do not receive Social Security, Pee Pee. The TRS pension and supplemental savings are all they have. The average teacher pension downstate is $35,000; since that’s above the Social Security max, would you advocate taxing most teacher pension income? As far as your “tax employer contribution” idea, that’s another loser, as the State/employer share of TRS has been steadily decreasing for years. For FY 06 it was barely 10 percent of total revenue. The largest source of revenue for all the pension systems is their investment income;why don’t you just complete the circle and tax that too, Pee Pee? - PalosParkBob - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 4:41 pm: Gee,AA, how clever of you to bring up downstate pensions instead instead of suburban high school teachers, where the abuses are most severe and pensions dwarf that of downstaters. Let’s check your math. If you’re claiming that cutting state, city, and school pensions in half will only reduce costs by $50 million, then get right on the phone to Blago and tell him his problems are over! The total state pension obligation, doubling your number, would only be $100 million per year. That’s not a problem in a $55 BILLION budget Remind me again, didn’t Arthur Andersen go under for falsifying financial information? Looks like you chose a pretty appropiate blog name. By the way, what’s with all these “Pee Pee” and “paddling” references towards people with whom you disagree? Even with my 12 hours of Psychology courses (including “Abnormal” and “Developmental”) I can see you have some Freudian issues. Spare us this junk and save it for your shrink! By the way, how about a reference for your TRS data? Put up or shut up, my friend. - Bill - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 4:51 pm: Pee Pee, There you go again spewing disinformation and lies. I wonder if you feel the same way about taxing military pensions. I didn’t think so. The problems that you have now are probably related to the reading deficiency you must have developed in Elementary school. You shouldn’t blame all teachers though. - way northsider - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 4:52 pm: End the exemption for retirement income on a means tested basis. - Holdingontomywallet - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 4:56 pm: I support neither; I don’t trust Government with any more of my money. They need to cut the give-away programs and special pork projects. And Blago needs to stop giving money to groups and causes for his perceived political gain. Oh, and thanks for the laugh Bill. “Right wing press” - that’s a good one, a real knee-slapper. - OneManBlog - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 5:20 pm: How about we just tax Gucci loafers and fancy steaks? We just lost 300 mfr jobs today in Aurora to a plant in China. Tell me the GRT isn’t going to hasten that process. - Bill - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 5:25 pm: OneMan, The GRT isn’t going to hasten that process. - A Citizen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 5:31 pm: Bill, you’re right, but that’s because it’s DEAD. - Bill - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 5:33 pm: You are probably right, A, but I don’t think that you will like the alternative. - A Citizen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 5:53 pm: Bill, the stated alternative by the gov was no grt then one billion in cuts. I like that. Of course the gov will say that means killing little league baseball, life support in neo-natal wards, and no more importing cinnamon for mom’s apple pie. You know the drill. Just kill the tax et al increases and hack off the billion. No need to stop there. - Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 5:54 pm: Bill said: “Close the loopholes for big business. Tax their gross receipts.” Unfortunately Bill, the Governor’s definition of big business includes 1 in 6 businesses in Illinois. Take a walk up and down Main Street sometime and paint a big Red X on every sixth door. Ironically, two groups will be exempted from the governor’s GRT: insurance companies and the recipient of the Lottery lease (GTech). So much for holding big business accountable. - fed up - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 7:21 pm: No New Taxes reduce the state payroll. Shut down the state airline. Stop paying $1000 for a toilet seats get rid of drivers for state employees. Maybe blago could use his campaign warchest to pay some of the states bills. He made the money state contracts and handing out state jobs so we should benifet from it. reducing the bloated budget and payroll are far more acceptable than one more cent into a corrupt goverment. - plutocrat03 - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 8:54 pm: Looks like even the reasonable folks on this list cannot get by without name calling. The fact of the matter is that the state has a staggering debt to its current and future retirees. The annual increase in spending continues to outstrip the substantial increases in revenue the state enjoys. Something has got to give. It is clear that there are socialists amongst us who loathe the fact that a corporation does not pay as much in taxes as they deem appropriate. Despite the fact that the rest of the country has figured out the stupidity of the GRT, and is working to remove it, we here in Illinois have to institute it? Many corporations are mobile enough to close their Illinois operations. Where will that leave our schools and real estate values? There are more than 1500 taxing bodies in Illinois. Each of them has their hand in our pockets. It’s not just the state which cannot live within its means, it is the counties, townships, schools, water districts, park districts, libraries and more who all have a good story to tell to continue the gravy train. Go ahead and look how many pensions have a line in your property tax bill. Appalling. We are not under taxed in Illinois. We need a movement to demand no more tax increases until the spending is under control. This will mean breaking the special interests who will fight with all their strength to maintain the status quo. - lincolnlandbubba - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 8:59 pm: add one vote for Steve Schnorfs analysis. I remember looking at a Civic Federation tax study several years ago and concluding that if you included the exempted items (food, drugs, & services ) you could lower the rate to Indianas level (thence stopping the leak of sales tax around the border) and actually increase total collections. Of course it is regressive, but who trully pays for under funded schools? In combo with a small GRT (sorry Blago haters it is a good concept) you would have a new and significantly better tax system. - Arthur Andersen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:05 pm: Pee Pee, try trs.illinois.gov and look up the 6/30/06 annual financial report. It does have a lot of big words, though. Alternatively, go read my post again. You don’t seen to understand the difference between annual pension payout and pension obligation. You first proposed taxing or reducing the former for six-figure annual pensions. When I point out to you that the revenue associated with that “ideer” isn’t much, you take 2 plus 2 and get 22 by saying “D’Oh-the whole pension obligation is $100 million-this guy AA is an idiot.” That’s not what I wrote and you must have had trouble in Math as well to come up with that stinker. Furthermore, the average “downstate” teacher pension in the $30’s is for all of TRS and includes those suburban high schoool teachers you are so obsessed with. (same source, BTW) I chose the AA handle because of all the ENRON accounting we still see in the public and private sectors years after their demise. Besides, “Bill” was taken. Speaking of blog names, for choosing Palos Park as yours, you sure write like you are from Carpentersville. - A Citizen - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:10 pm: … In combo with a small GRT … That cracks me up ! The GRT is dead and buried but like a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman, you just have to try to get your foot or even just a toe in the door. Then next year what ? Well my goodness it would miraculously shoot up. No More Taxes !!! Blago can’t be trusted with the taxes he already gets. Bring on the One Billion in cuts . . . only as a starter, then next year . . . ! - Team Sleep - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:20 pm: I think too many people on this thread forgot to eat their bran muffins this morning. - Jechislo - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:44 pm: Hey AA! I used to live in Carpentersville! - Me - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 9:45 pm: Cassandra at 10:27 am “There must be some reason why seniors were exempted from the income tax in the first place.” Actually, a couple of reasons: a bad Illinois Supreme Court decision and a couple of accidents. Not long after the income tax was enacted in 69, the Supreme Court held that the General Assembly did not intend to tax income that was actually earned before the tax was enacted, even though it would be constitutional for it to do so. This was a little strange, because the Senate Revenue Committee had expressly discussed the issue and determined that the act did tax pre-enactment income — the discussion was whether it was constitutional to do so. Anyway, the General Assembly responded by following the time-honored rule that a tax break can never be taken away, even if given by a stupid court. They changed the law to say that individuals were not taxed on income, expressly including retirement income, that was earned before 69. (Note that the new law also said that fat-cat corporations ARE taxed on pre-69 income). Retirement plan administrators and actuaries went crazy because computing how much retirement income was “earned” before a given date is very, very complicated and even subjective. So the General Assembly responded by simply exempting all retirement income. There was discussion of repealing the exemption after maybe 10 years, on the grounds that most pre-69 income would have been distributed by then, but, of course, once a tax break is allowed, it can never be taken away. In fact, it has been expanded since. BTW, graduated tax rates is expressly prohibited by the constitution. Also, taxing retirement income once the person earns “too much” to be exempt is arguably a graduated tax, so even if the General Assembly could muster the courage to do it, they would be inviting litigation to resolve the issue. - Dooley Dudright - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:31 pm: Me, 9:45 – “BTW, graduated tax rates is expressly prohibited by the constitution.” Thank you. I stand corrected. Another reason, then, to call a Con-Con next year: provide for a graduated income tax. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, May 22, 07 @ 10:55 pm: Wow, this got a little vitriolic today, eh? lol - PalosParkBob - Wednesday, May 23, 07 @ 9:22 am: AA: Obviously taxing only those pensions over $100K would have minimal impact. But the lower you go, the more “return” revenue you could generate. How about $80K pensions at age 55? $70K, $60K? When we’re paying for pensions triple what we poor saps in Social Security receive, I don’t think there’d be much room for pensioners to complain. You’re absolutely right about the “out years” being the problem, and that’s what we need to address If current average pension payments of about $3,200 per month would only rise by the cost of living between now and 2045, we don’t have a significant problem. The problem is that the system can’t handle people coming into the system at age 55 at 75% of their base salary. Considering that the average Illinois teacher has about 13 years of experience (about age 35)and is making about $56K per nine months as shown in the school report cards, if they retired TODAY at max pension it would require pension payments over $40K per year, about 15% above current retirees with an average age of 69. There are a few very important numbers that aren’t being made publically available by TRS, such as the average current new retiree pension payments. I understand from “unofficial” sources in the gov that it’s about $60K per year. The root cause of the pension, and state revenue, problems are clear; increasing salaries and new pension payments at rates double to triple the rate of inflation and any revenue stream (income, sales tax, corporate tax, etc)while dramatically increasing pension obligations by expanding pension payout periods simply isn’t sustainable under any “revenue enhancement” plan or responsible spending practice. Until people like you and Bill (who isn’t telling the truth) come to grips with this issue and take action to minimize pension payment and payment period as allowed under the constitution,there can be no long term solution to the state’s budget woes. By the way, I take your comparison of me to our friend in Carpentersville as great compliment! Thanks. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.