Another Pritzker budget, another plethora of tax increases.
Pritzker’s eight new tax increases will take another $800 million from Illinois workers. This brings JB’s total tax and fee increases to 65, amounting to $8.5 billion annually, leaving Illinois residents paying the highest taxes and fees in the country.
Effective state and local tax rates totaled nearly 17% for a median Illinois household last year, compared to the national average of just 11.02%. Unbelievably, that is even higher than No. 2-ranked New York at 14.95%. Meanwhile, Illinois property taxes have increased by $11 billion, or 33%.
Illinois’ economy has performed so poorly that nearly all revenue growth used to fund the state’s ever-expanding government has come from tax increases rather than economic growth. In fact, since Pritzker took office, almost all employment growth has been in government jobs.
Illinois residents—particularly middle- and upper-income earners—are voting with their feet. Since Pritzker took office, Illinois has continued to lose residents, while the state’s population decline has been offset by a surge in migrant arrivals, which some estimates place at more than 500,000 people. Surveys also show that roughly half of remaining residents say they would leave Illinois if they had the means to do so.