Taxing “the rich” doesn’t tax the rich after all
Last month we told you about the largest tax hike in the history of the state of Illinois, a 67% increase in income taxes, and corporate taxes rising to 9.5%. This would raise $2 billion and balance the budget claimed Governor Pat Quinn (D.). The tax was so widely popular that companies like Sears, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange threatened to move out of Illinois if something wasn’t done.
You probably know by now how that worked out.
…Mr Quinn [as of May] had already doled out corporate welfare to at least 80 firms, costing the state nearly $500 million since 2009.
And,
…last week the Democrats who run the state government ladled out $85 million in tax relief to the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, plus tax credits for Sears Holdings Corp. worth $15 million a year for the next 10 years.
Here is the kicker.
…the Illinois Policy Institute recently calculated that over 15 years the revenue loss from all the corporate tax giveaways will exceed the revenues raised from the corporate tax increase. [emphasis supplied]
Meanwhile, the taxes on individuals and small businesses in Illinois are among the highest in the country. Their taxes will no doubt be raised again to make up the “shortfall” caused by “freebies” to the rich and famous. And, as they are not big and powerful, they simply are left to pull harder.
Oh, by the way, the budget isn’t balanced either.
11 Comments
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The rich didn’t get that way because they’re stupid. They’ll take their money & run away or into some deal with their antagonizers.
This is the most ridiculous, confusing tax increase (decrease?) I have seen in quite awhile.? The hypocrisy is ginormous!? I’m sure there will be some kickbacks to Mr. Quinn from all those evil rich folks and the dem party will surely benefit off the backs of small business owners and the poor-middle class folks.? It’s a win-win, right???? What a maroon.
No matter how often this happens, people do not learn. They continue to vote the same crooks into office.
I like how here in not particularly inexpensive MA, people come from CT to buy our cheaper gas and tax breaks and from NY to buy real estate, yet they keep electing the socialists that make their home states too expensive to live in.
?
Pure genius.
I forget who I heard say it recently, maybe Rush, but the process was likened to a cancer. They ruin the states they live in only to move to another and start the process all over. The dems are like a creeping plague.
Or locusts….? 😉
It goes without saying that the MSM in Illinois under reported the Sears, et al tax concessions. The people of Illinois are probably very much unaware of Mr. Quinn’s largesse toward the monies few. True, the tax gambit kept corporations and money changers in the state for the time being. What happens down the road, say in ten years? There has to be a tipping point where the individual taxpayer and small business owners simply cannot pay for all of the state’s lavish beneficence. What then??
Of curse, Mr. Quinn will be re-elected because he will rightly crow that he kept the large institutions in the state while conveniently forgotten are the little guys, toiling to pay their yearly humungous tax burden.
I think where the Marxists go wrong is assuming that tax dollars go in and come out to aid the comrades. Nothing could be further from the truth. Federal fiscal policy in a bad economy must decrease taxes AND increase spending.? To say that it is a zero sum game for us is reasonably accurate (only the feds can print more money, we can’t).? Wait until the tax holidays expire – Danny-Boy is doing the exact same in CT.
You have hit on the central flaw in using government confiscated tax monies to “fix” things: Whenever $1 comes into the state or federal government, only about (generous here) $0.80 (80 cents or 4/5ths of every dollar!) is available to be applied to “fixing” any particular problem.
Why? Administrative overhead and debt service suck up at least 20% of the available tax money. (All of those government employees are NOT altruists!)
Tax the rich: great for generating class warfare, lousy for generating revenue.
There it is. Create class strife, dissension, and warfare. The rich and wealth are not among us. Their “frontrunner” status precludes their even being around the middle class, let alone the poor.
Of course, we have the preeminent Czar of Class Warfare, our very own ?bama! Coupled with providing government funding for all of his and the DNC’s pals, he is successfully bankrupting the U.S. (Done and redone: He is just running up the tab.) At what point will the government accountants declare that the economy is shrinking and cannot support the existing tax burden? Talk about “lousy for generating revenue.”
Kill the golden goose, all for the sake of (the socialist goals of) income redistribution and income equality. But, not for the rich and their pals. In general, they will never have to consider themselves amongst the unemployed, the hoi-polli. ” Some animals are more equal that other animals.” (Animal Farm)