Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 26, 2026
3 Comments
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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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.
What a great novel idea? Tax the rich. Did these geniuses think that one up all by themselves? Add one more reason to the long list as to why people with money should not be in Illinois. Apparently, the object lesson of the real estate tax burden moving from no longer existing businesses in the Loop to the neighborhoods, is too much for Illinois mental midgets to get their arms around. At what point does it occur to you that Illinois as a viable state to live and raise a family is done. Too many leeches and not enough blood… Read more »
We bought a home out of state 7 years ago. Sold our Illinois home and never looked back. Our decision to leave has saved us tens of thousands in property taxes. Best financial move ever. The govt pensions for schools, police, city, and fire dept jacked our property tax up every year. living in Illinois is a waste of life. We were not millionaires.
We left Chicago (Lakeview) at the end of 2023 and sold our house in early 2024. I looked and the tax bills that came out in 2025 (for 2024, the year we left) show the tax went up 29% year-on-year. Sorry for the purchasers, but I hope they’re enjoying the house.
When we lived in Illinois I worked 2 months to pay our property taxes. I now only work 2 weeks to pay taxes on the same valuation as the Illinois home.
We lived in central Illinois near Peoria. The city’s annual budget for the police and fire is not enough to pay the required annual pension contributions. The high school I graduated from has a 85% to 90% graduation rate and yet had less than 10% proficient in math or reading upon said graduation. The school district spends more than 25k per student a year and the results are a big fat F. In Illinois productive people are nothing but tax mules for the corrupt one party system. Get out now if you can.
Pat Quinn is a political gadfly who somehow got elected then did nothing to address anything that he complained about endlessly for the previous decades. His only claim to fame is that he didn’t end up in prison like all the other governors.
While he wasn’t effective, he did try to reform pensions. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t understand our constitution and had the courts smack him down.
It would be just like the lottery revenue, in one fund for schools and reduction in the other funding.
It’s CTU/Stacy’s bill and it’s CTU/Stacy’s money. She’ll tell you how much she’s going to keep when she feels good and ready peasant.
Offering up property tax rebates doesn’t really work either because the rebates will be concentrated to poor school disitricts (think South Suburbs), which means those school districts will simply max out their taxes and pass bond referendums marketed as “free” because your “rebate” will pay for it. Worse, it will be subject to the whims of politicians to deem who is worthy. A better solution would be to increase the property tax credit from 5% to 15% (or whatever rate generates what a millionaire’s tax would generate) because any household over $500K can’t take the credit anyway. These are the… Read more »
Illinois’ political animals always overestimate the take from confiscated taxpayer funds. Be it cigarette taxes, fuel taxes, amusement taxes, it doesn’t matter. Every time these cretinous forms of life go in front of the Useless Chicago Media and bloviate their latest attempt to confiscate more money from taxpayers, they lie. They get it wrong almost as often as Climate Cleric temperature prognostications. They always overestimate the take. Bally’s Chicago anyone?
Illinois political animals have zero sense and zero credibility.
No more money for public schools or teachers until teachers start educating students and student test scores improve. Public schools need to educate, not indoctrinate.
Putting money into education is like trying to teach a pig to dance.
This tax will just chase away more high-income job creators out of state.
Half for property tax relief, the other half down a rat hole.But even the property tax relief isn’t really relief; it’s just changing which pockets are picked by Illinois governments.
Yep and then a likewise amount of general funding would be cut from the schools just like they did with the lottery funds creating just another vote buying slush fund. Do people in Illinois ever learn?
This is a slippery slope. When they tax “millionaires”, it will quickly become a tax on everyone else. They undoubtedly will include language that says they don’t need voters approval before lowering the threshold for any extra taxes. They have tried it before.
Illinois’ continuing message to anyone with money is to move the hell out of here.
Sold the LOTTERY saying it was for schools . Then TOOK THR MONEY AND PUT IT IN THE GENERAL FUND . 16 BILLION INCREASE under PIGSTER
So is this 1 million$ on paper, where they are taxing unrealized gains. If so we are back to the Biden policy?
So a graduated tax amendment for the November 2026 election. This time only going after the “rich” millionaires and everyone else stays the same? During an off year and Trump not on the ballot, it might pass with this strategy. Then wait a bit and start charging the rich “adjacent” more down the road. Only a matter of time as I’ve stated in the past.
If you look at what Massachusetts did, they specifically wrote $1 million in their constitutional amendment AND indexed it to inflation. If IL did sonething similar, it would increase the chance ot passage and pretty much eliminate the threat of a trickle down to the “rich adjacent”. If Fair Tax 2.0 is proposed without such protections, it will probably go down in flames again. Because even though 2026 is off-cycle, 2020 was an absolute blue wave of epic proportions with a massive support campaign behind it. Opposition didn’t show up until the last minute, had zero ground game, yet still… Read more »
Even the Republicans in this state don’t want to tax those public pensions. They are protected by both parties in Illinois. But keep dreaming they will go after them.
Must be an enormous pension is she’s concerned about paying taxes on it. From the article, the proposed tax amount seems to be 3% in excess of $1M, but maybe they apply the tax to the entire amount if income (pension or otherwise) is over $1M?
No better way to determine what Republicans in the state want than consult a comment from a candidate about her mother, right?
How about we go off the Illinois Senate where over 60% of Illinois Republicans voted to enshrine collective bargaining into the constitution? You could also go by the unanimous support from Republicans about bumping up some tier 2 pensioners to tier 1 status.
Yes, decades before you were born, ZOOMER
The vote for amendment 1 took place (enshrining collective bargaining rights for public unions) on May 21, 2021. Less than 5 years ago Boomer. In summer of 2025, Republicans unanimously voted to allow pension sweeteners for certain Chicago public safety pensioners. Try to keep up Ignorant Patriot.
You are likely correct on the pensions, unfortunately, but a “millionaire” tax is going to cause even more people to leave the city/state. I’ve already taken my income out of Chicago and will take it out of IL by 2028. I am not, on the surface, opposed to paying taxes (I lived in Massachusetts for the 20 yrs prior to moving to IL), but there has to be some benefit. After a decade-plus in IL, the only benefit seems to be to union employees and the gerrymandered democratic politicians they keep electing. Kids, on average, are not getting educated, businesses/jobs… Read more »
Wow that added to the lottery money that was meant for the schools should put us over the hump on having the smartest students in the world
So, half to property tax relief (whatever that means) and the other half to the bottomless pit of the education business – AKA school districts. Uh huh… If ever there was bill that illustrated just how far up the ass of Jumbo the teachers union and education business cabal is…it is this. With the state completely under water financially with no end in sight, corrupt as hell and spending 50% more in total now than when Jumbo was elected…he wants to implement this ridiculous tax on millionaires and use 50% of the tax collected to again – flush it down… Read more »
More money for the Union goons at CTU where 90% of the high school graduates can’t spell their name. Makes sense to me!