To the Editor:
A progressive income tax conjures up images of a ‘fair tax’ based upon a person’s income level.
HR 689, ‘The Progressive Tax Bill’ sponsored by upstate political titan Lou Lang (D-Skokie) is anything but progressive. Instead, HR 689 masks more of the same failed economic policies leading to Illinois and the Metro East’s mass population exodus.
HR 689 is another feeble attempt to make up for lost state revenues. The bill would gouge middle class disproportionately to pay for irresponsible state spending.
The latest figures available show that in 2013 many tax payers left Illinois to live in Indiana, Florida, and Texas. $4.1 billion dollars in gross adjusted income left with them. Indiana received the lion’s share at $1.9 billion. Illinois' loss of small businesses and middle class wage earners proceeds at a rapid rate.
For example, Madison County lost 1 percent of it’s population last year.
If HR 689 passes, more small businesses and wage earners will vanish. Under its provisions the non corporate tax (small business tax) will be 11.25 percent. The corporate tax (large business tax) will be 7.75 percent.
In addition, HR 689 allows politicians to tailor the tax rate to apply the rates selectively to whoever they want.
Small business will become little more than a cash cow for upstate politicians funding their spending agenda.
HR 689 remains a desperate effort to fund discredited fiscal policies of the upstate political elite. HR 689 will sacrifice the middle class for out of control spending.
Philip W. Chapman
Highland