(The Center Square) – The mayor of Chicago is pushing for a progressive income tax in Illinois, even though a recent economic report says it would make the state less competitive.
Mayor Brandon Johnson lobbied for more funding from state taxpayers when he visited the Illinois Capitol Wednesday.
“There’s nothing surreptitious about our presentation around revenues. We have a flat income tax. That’s a problem. Everybody knows that,” Johnson said.
The mayor’s budget office has projected the city’s budget deficit to be over $1 billion, although Alderman Scott Waguespack told The Center Square he believes the shortfall could surpass $1.5 billion.
Johnson’s administration has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on non-citizen migrant care and agreed to spend an estimated additional $1.5 billion on a new four-year contract for the Chicago Teachers Union.
“The way the trajectory is occurring, there’s not going to be enough in the long run to respond to our retirement obligations and responsibilities, as well as the investments that the people of the state of Illinois and particularly the city of Chicago want us to make,” Johnson said Wednesday.
The American Legislative Exchange Council’s Rich States Poor States report released last month ranked Illinois 46 out of 50 for economic outlook.
Report author Jonathan Williams said Illinois’ flat income tax kept the state from dropping even further in the rankings.
“Illinois’ rank in the flat-tax ranking piece of that, even as the rate has not moved, Illinois falls behind by standing still, even in the best of the variables, more or less, for Illinois, because so many other states are moving in the right direction,” Williams told The Center Square. “So you have a scenario now where Illinois has been an outlier in the Midwest, and it’s becoming increasingly so.”
Illinois lawmakers increased the state’s income tax rate in both 2011 and 2017.
Voters rejected a progressive income tax proposed by the General Assembly in 2020, even though Gov. J.B. Pritzker spent more than $50 million to support the campaign in favor of the tax.
Illinois state Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, proposed Senate Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 4 earlier this year. The measure would ask voters again to replace language in the Illinois Constitution to allow for a graduated tax system.
Greg Bishop and Glenn Minnis contributed to this story.
