Illinois has the highest effective total state & local tax rates in the nation on median U.S. household. Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 26, 2026
15 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.
Maybe it’s time to replace anger with introspection. For those who are able to move ask yourself, “In a year or two from now will I be happier if I’m a still a resident of Illinois or another state?”
Additionally, in ten or twenty years when my children say, “Thanks a lot for relocating our family out of Illinois,” will they be saying it sarcastically or gratefully?
This is hardly a surprise but disgusting nonetheless. When your state is so far out of line and your elected officials say they need more, it is time to vote with your feet.
We’re #1! We’re #1! Oops, nothing to cheer about…
One of the reasons I moved from Illinois to Nevada was the significant difference in tax burden. Gas prices are about the same due to Nevada’s gas tax. Sales taxes in Nevada are high, 8.25%; but Chicago had 10.25%; Property taxes are significantly lower, and capped. Illinois income tax is 4.95%, not super high but Nevada is 0%. With remote work, you need to look at leaving IL. If you have to get to the city occasionally, you need to look at Northwest Indiana (and tolerate all the snow)
Sales taxes in my little southwestern Illinois liberal utopia are much higher than the State sales tax thanks to all those little 1/8ths and 1/4trs that are added in to provide all the luxuries Government can shower upon us after they, the government minions, take their healthy personal cut of the action. The situation is similar in many other Illinois areas as well so that 8.25% might be lower than in many areas other than Chicago. By the way in my area I have, as an experiment, asked around if people know how much the effective sale’s tax rate is… Read more »
9 months, two weeks for me. Not that I’m counting.
On the bright side if Pritzker would have gotten his tax hike passed Illinois would not have gone higher on the most taxed state list.
Want to know why?
Look who is governor.
Look who the two A**ha** are that are
senators.
They do not work for the people of Illinois they have their hands out for themselves–for their power and their money.
Related to taxes, but not captured in the analysis, is the negative effect that property taxes have on property values. Property owners’ lost equity hits their personal bottom lines eventually, just the same as annual tax payments do. I suspect that Illinois would look much worse relative to the other states if this were factored in.
Yup, a quarter trillion dollars over ten years, at last count: https://wirepoints.org/new-data-subpar-home-appreciation-has-cost-illinoisans-quarter-trillion-dollars-over-ten-years/