Avoiding Taxes
Paging through the Illinois Policy website, we ran across this article from a couple weeks ago about "26 Tax Ideas" that Conehead is looking to impose. No idea how we missed it, but we thought we'd bring it to people's attention, seeing as how you are (and we were) required to live here while employed:
Here are nine of the worst ideas from the list of 26:
Corporate excise tax ($1.5 billion)
The most dramatic idea was a new corporate excise tax that would target businesses with over $8 million in annual payroll in Chicago. The tax would levy 5% of the payroll costs for employees earning over $200,000 per year. This proposal has already met heavy opposition from business leaders, with Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce president Jack Lavin stating the tax is a “direct deterrent on companies locating here, staying here, creating jobs here.”
High taxes have been a primary contributor to the city losing at least 10 major headquarters since 2020 including three of the largest companies In the U.S.: Caterpillar, Boeing and Tyson Foods.
And those three companies alone account for a massive hole in Conehead's budget with even more on the way should this proposal pass.
Charge sales tax on services (up to $305 million)
Similar to an idea proposed statewide for Illinois, a sales tax on services would extend taxes to items such as haircuts, plumbing, lawncare and more. Taxpayers already have to contend with a city sales tax rate of 10.25%, one of the highest in the nation. This change would require action from the Illinois General Assembly and approval by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has already voiced reservations about broadening the sales tax.
We already get haircuts outside of the City, our plumber is a good friend who takes cash off the record and we pay a neighborhood kid to do the lawn. We imagine the big downtown law firms would raise the biggest objections to this tax....and as they contribute mightily to the dems, would lobby pretty damn hard against this.
Garbage tax collection (up to $296.9 million)
Chicago’s garbage collection fee has been $9.50 since 2014, with strong opposition whenever fee bumps were discussed. Chicago currently collects $68.8 million in revenue each year to cover garbage collection, against an annual cost of $167.2 million. To bridge that gap, city leaders are again eyeing higher fees, with proposals ranging from a $15.50 per month fee up to $55 per month. The highest option would cost families about $550 more per year, a big boost in a city already dealing with high property taxes, rising rents and inflation.
And what if we don't use the garbage collection? What if we just took our trash and dumped it on the west side? Who'd notice? Would we be entitled to partial refunds?
Other tax and fee ideas
- New congestion surcharge: $90 million
- Tax on restaurant meals: $20 million
- Bottled water: $27.9 million
- Checkout bags: $13 million
- Extending amusement tax to ticket resellers: $38 million
- Imposing a city tax on sports betting: $17 million
Well....:
- we don't go downtown
- we don't eat out in the city
- we haven't bought water in the city since the first tax
- we got those reusable bags when it was all the craze
- we don't like crowds
- we have a VPN that seems to indicate we're betting from Nevada
As you can see, there are dozens of ways to avoid these projected taxes. The "expected" revenue from each are pure fantasy numbers and as people realize how easy it is to avoid most of them, will only decrease over time. Then more businesses will leave Chicago, resulting in decreasing tax revenues, meaning larger deficits and more tax hikes, etc, etc.
The simplest explanation of the Death Spiral.
Labels: money questions, sarcasm AND silliness
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