-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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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.