Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 26, 2026
23 Comments
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
One more reason to leave Illinois
Even thick headed Pritzker knows that taxing retirement income is toxic. He needs the revenue badly, but seniors will come after him with everything they have. No tax on retirement income is the only thing keeping many seniors in this godforsaken state. That’s not changing anytime soon.
I suspect that every time the Pritzker “Fair Tax” cabal went public with a (not very) thinly veiled threat to tax retirement income, if we didn’t do away with the flat tax, that they were also assuring AFSCME, SEIU, CTU, et al, that it was just a ruse, and that the Dem’s have no intention of taxing their public employee union master’s retirement wages.
I personally feel that retirement income from public sector union jobs should be taxed, and should be taxed by IL, the state who pays it, to wherever the slimy rats decide to slither off to when the retire at 55. Is it a separate class? Yes. They made that clear for the last 40 years and now we should tax them as a separate class.
The Pension Source Tax Act of 1996 stipulates that no state may impose an income tax on any retirement income of an individual who is not a resident or domiciliary of such state, so Illinois can’t tax pensioners who move away. If you’re gonna tax retirement income, you have to tax all retirement income.
One way to kinda get around it would be to exempt social security from taxation, which makes sense as you’ve already paid taxes on those wages. State and muni pensioners who also pay into SS would qualify, so it couldn’t be seen as a vindictive policy.