HOW WILL ILLINOIS’ $5 BILLION TAX HIKE AFFECT YOU?

HOW WILL ILLINOIS’ $5 BILLION TAX HIKE AFFECT YOU?

By Christopher Shuttlesworth

The Illinois Policy Institute has created a tax hike calculator which determines how the new $5 billion tax hike will affect a family’s paycheck. The calculator was created by the Institute after Illinois lawmakers passed a new state budget.

Craig Lesner, who is the Budget and Tax Research Director at the Illinois Policy

Institute, said in order to use the tax hike calculator, taxpayers can go to the Illinois Policy Institute’s website and input certain data including whether they file taxes

as a married couple, a single individual or a widow. Taxpayers also include their yearly income and the number of children in the family.

By inputting the data, the calculator can determine a person’s tax liability. The

calculator also compares the old and new tax rate and how it affects the person’s income.

“The Illinois median family makes $59,000 so in that particular case, you would use the old tax rate and compare it to the new tax rate,” Lesner said. “The reason why we do this is because we want people to understand that the income tax hike isn’t just something you read in the paper, it’s actually real dollars that’s going to come out of people's’ pay check,” he added.

Lawmakers voted to permanently increase the personal income tax rate to 4.95 percent from the current 3.75 percent rate on July 6, 2017. A 2017 study conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates showed that 60 percent of Illinoisans believe that state taxes are currently too high and 80 percent wanted Illinois state lawmakers to pass major structural reforms before passing any type of tax increase.

Illinois citizens are “fed up with elitists’ tax hikes, out-of-control spending and

poor governance,” Illinois Policy Institute Chief Executive Officer John Tillman said.

“They know that the legislators who passed this phony budget have achieved nothing, except to make the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Illinoisans more difficult, more expensive and more burdensome.”

“It’s just piling bad money after bad money after bad money and after a while,

people are going to say that they have had enough and they are going to leave

for places that have better opportunities whether it be Indiana, Texas or wherever,”

Lesner said.

Latest Stories

Latest Podcast

STARR Community Services International, Inc.