Under Lang’s plan, Illinois’ top tax rate for noncorporate businesses would become 11.25 percent — the second-highest rate in the U.S.
A progressive tax would give Illinois politicians carte blanche to raise rates, which would end up sticking middle-class taxpayers with rates originally intended for “the rich” – all while chasing still more residents and businesses out of the state.
HB 5937 prohibits the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation from barring former offenders from working in these areas unless their crimes directly relate to the occupations for which they seek licenses. A job is crucial to preventing repeat offenses: Nearly half of ex-offenders in Illinois end up back behind bars within three years, but ex-offenders who are employed a year after release can have a recidivism rate as low as 16 percent.
The Illinois House of Representatives voted against a proposal to freeze property taxes, denying much-needed relief to Illinoisans, who bear the third-highest property-tax burden in the nation.
The House speaker’s proposal to hike taxes on small businesses failed to garner the 71 necessary “yes” votes needed to pass out of the House on April 20.
DuPage County is projected to save millions of dollars through government-consolidation authority it has enjoyed for years. Now, the Illinois House of Representatives has voted in favor of a bill that would expand these capabilities to all counties statewide.
The mayor’s plan to construct the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art includes more of the same bad policies that got Chicago into its fiscal crisis: a bid to borrow $1.2 billion and hike taxes on residents.
Illinois gained 14,700 payroll jobs on net in March, and compared relatively well with other states in the region for the month, trailing only Ohio in monthly jobs growth. Despite this growth, however, the unemployment rate increased to 6.5 percent. The state also lost 3,100 manufacturing jobs on net.
Illinois’ economy lagged the national average between 2003 and 2014. Had Illinois’ gross domestic product grown at the same pace as the national average since 2003, Illinois workers would have generated an additional $64.6 billion in products and services in 2014.
House Bill 5522 would require local governments and school districts in Illinois to maintain websites with links to vital public information such as budgets, expenditures and officials’ names and numbers.
Total compensation for affected legislators and statewide officeholders equals about $1.3 million per month, according to the comptroller. On top of salaries, taxpayers also have to foot the bill for lawmaker pensions – in Illinois’ active legislators will each cost the state budget about $180,000 next year.