WSJ Opinion Article on Illinois Taxes
Posted by Carl from Chicago on March 21st, 2009 (All posts by Carl from Chicago)
The WSJ recently wrote an opinion piece on the Illinois tax increases which I wrote about here called “The Taxing Illini”. From the article:
This is a state that does almost everything wrong economically. It is not a right-to-work state and is thus heavily unionized, repelling new business investment. It has the fifth highest minimum wage among the states, the fifth most trial-lawyer friendly legal code, the sixth highest workers’ compensation costs, and the 11th highest property taxes. It has one of the highest inheritance taxes, at 16%, so retirees flee to states with no death tax, such as Florida and Arizona. A rare Illinois advantage has been its relatively low income-tax rate, but that will shrink or vanish under Mr. Quinn’s increase.
The sad part about this article is that they failed to mention that Illinois has pretty much the highest sales tax rate of any state in the country, and in Cook County the rate is higher than 10% with relatively few exemptions. I guess they just ran out of bad things to say about the state, or figured that the “slaughter rule” was in effect, kind of like in that recent WBC game featuring the USA team.
Cross posted at LITGM
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:34 am
Now now, at our illustrious and honorable new governor Pat Quinn keeps reminding us he is making the “tough choices” needed to balance te states budget.
Never mind that I am the one who will inevitable have to make the real tough choices as I will be hit with the double whammy of a pay cut at my primary employer (5% across the board in my department) as well as having to pay more in income and property taxes.