League of Women Voters hosted debate at the North Suburban Library District on a proposed constitutional amendment for a fair tax allowing higher rates on higher incomes and lower rates on lower incomes.
State Senator Dave Syverson and Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability spoke out with differing opinions.
Ralph Martire with the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability spoke at a League of Women Voters forum on September 26, 2013, at Quincy University's North Campus.
"Illinois' taxes are designed to work in about a turn of the century economy if the turn of the century were going into the 1900's. Since it doesn't work in a modern economy, we've never had adequate revenue to invest in infrastructure or education or healthcare or social services," said Ralph Martire.
Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund cites CTBA's bipartisan analysis that the financial challenges facing their Pension Fund can be attributed to nearly 20 years of short-sighted decisions involving diverted taxes.
So far, it's only a resolution, nothing more, a resolution filed in the House and Senate, virtually identical to resolutions filed almost annually for the last quarter-century, only rarely to be debated and never passed.
Even if passed, the resolution would need a super-majority of
State legislature may consider whether to move to a graduated income tax rate, meaning those who earn more would pay more.
The progressive tax could lower the marginal tax rate of 94 percent of the state’s taxpayers.
It's clear that the state's budget crisis is a complicated problem with no quick fix.
If you want to believe "unaffordable" pension benefits promised to public sector workers like teachers and social workers caused Illinois' outsized, $83 billion unfunded pension liability, stop reading now. This column will only make your head hurt by disproving that canard with facts. If you'd rather understand both the true cause of that underfunding and how it actually strains the state's budget, then continue reading.