Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Income tax increase only hurts a little

Mike Tryon's legislative update arrived by email today. It read, in part,

"This week, the House passed legislation that would have generated $2.2 billion to honor existing contracts for community providers. The short-term borrowing would have paid today’s debt with tomorrow’s debt..."

Hey, Mike! This is what people want stopped.

OK, so how much would an income tax increase hurt you? Figure it out.

Let's say a family has a taxable Illinois income of $40,000. At the current 3% income tax rate, their Illinois income tax is $1,200. Big deal. $23.00/week. That's what they pay now.

And, if the income tax went up to 4.5%, their tax would be only $1,800, or $34.60/week.

The difference? $11.60/week, or $2.32 each workday, or $.30/hour for each hour they are supposed to work in a week.

So they can give up a couple of stops at Starbuck's for a little while.

That is not going to break anyone!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

So let me figure out your logic. Its not going to hurt anyone in these small increments? Where does it stop? Tomorrow it will be just a small amount, and the next coming years another "small" hike will be needed and so on and so forth until you know it, its at something like 10%. But the people want the deficit stopped. If they want to clear the deficit that's drowning this state like many other states, i.e. California, the problem doesn't not involve tax revenue, the problem is with the elected officials handling OUR money. Taxes do not fix the problem, the just compound the existing situation.
Many thing are in the budget that are not directly expressed to the public. Too many public officials are getting golden pensions that suck up the incoming revenue. Politicians have gone from being the voice of the people to advancing their own personal agendas. Do they want to give that up?, NO!.
Another problem is the dependence on government. Too many social programs are being created. Welfare is a big problem. Yes, some people need it, but there are many that abuse it. Many couples or individuals have as many kids as they can to collect more welfare. Its just a growing problem. I could give more reasons but I just don't have the time to list all of them.
All in all, if we want to get cure the deficit, its time to take out the trash out of the government. States that have small deficits or don't have any at all, like Texas and Florida, don't have an income tax. We need to model our budget off of theirs and stop electing Chicago politicians into our state government.

Gus said...

Well said, ace. I want massive cuts in the pork, but right now what is needed is income. And with a tight rein on spending it. Of course, that's the problem and is what got us in the pickle that this state is in.

Maybe one of the citizens' or taxpayers' advocacy groups has a list of all the pork and whose arms have grease all the way up to their shoulders. I'll nose around and see if I can find a website with such a list.

Unknown said...

Another thing, if our state accepts Obama's horrendous stimulus money, that's just going to open up a can of worms. No one really knows what is involved in this. It comes with requirements to start social programs that the stimulus will only fund for a year or so, then guess what?, the state will have to allocate money to that when that fund dries up. So much for a stimulus to bankrupt a state.
People who see this as a wonderful thing just blow my mind. We are just sitting back and watching our country fall deeper into hole as we dissolve into socialism. It makes me sick! (of course the news outlets wont show it like that)

Gus said...

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford tried to duck the Federal stimulus money. South Carolina took it, anyway.