Quinn's tax swap
Back in the early 90s when I had been out of work for a
while, I got my property tax bill in the mail, and I realized the absurdity of
the whole thing. The value of a person’s
property has little or no correlation to one’s ability to pay taxes on it. About 2/3 of my property taxes were for
schools, so I have been advocating since then for funding our schools through
income taxes rather than through property taxes.
So I should have been pleased when Governor Quinn announced
his plan to reduce property taxes while making the state’s temporary income tax
permanent, all in the name of better funding public schools?
So why am I not enthused?
Actually I am angry with his proposal.
So what could be so wrong with it?
It is wrong for three reasons.
You have to ask the question: when this temporary tax hike
was first proposed, did Governor Quinn and our other government leaders really
believe that this would be temporary, that this temporary tax hike would do all
that they were expecting it to do, that they had no real intention or hope of
making it permanent?
The state had a backlog of $8.5 billion in unpaid bills when
they proposed this tax (2011), and it had a backlog of $7.3 billion at the end
of 2013. So this new tax raised over $18
billion dollars, and they were only able to reduce the backlog of bills by
about $1 billion.
I’m sorry, but I believe we were lied to. We were betrayed by our elected leaders who
only see money as a tool to be used by them to further their elected careers. They spend money they don’ t have to buy
political goodwill through all the ‘good’ they are doing, and then when the
bills come due, they cry poor and make up baloney reasons to raise taxes.
I have some quotes about what we were told about this
temporary tax hike, but I don’t have the original sources, so their value is
diminished. But they all emphasized the
temporary nature of this tax hike to “pay our bills,” “pay off our debt,” and
definitely “not to expand programs” or “do brand new things.”
So with all this current debt and backlog of bills, what
does the Governor do? He also recently
proposed to fund early child education and to subsidize first time home
mortgages.
The state has no intention of paying off its bills. Its goal is to create as much government dependency
as possible, because this is the only way they are able to stay in office. It is hoped that the voting base of those
needing government assistance will permanently be larger than the base of those
who don’t, so their political future will be secure.
Now I have actually written a plan about substituting, or
swapping, property taxes for income taxes, and in my most recent version of it,
I was quite willing to accept this permanent additional 2% income tax, but not
this plan. But I will get to that in
reason three.
The second reason I reject this plan is that for everybody
who makes over $25,000 a year, this is a permanent tax hike. Quinn is offering a $500 rebate on property
taxes, but this only offsets a person’s income taxes if they make less than
this 25K a year.
He is wording his proposal as a change in “the way Illinois
schools are funded,” but in reality nothing is changing. He is only adding to the backlog of bills he
has to pay. He already has the revenue
from the 2% income tax, we still have $7.3 billion in unpaid bills, and now he
wants to give every property owner a check for $500 as well? So where is this money going to come from? It will just put the state deeper in
debt. But he is hoping that property
owners just see the $500, and since they already are paying the 2%, he hopes they
figure they are coming out ahead. It’s
like the street hustler who has the three overturned cups, and you have to
follow the pea to see which cup it is under.
It’s hard to keep track of the money trail.
The third reason. In
my proposal, which is on my blogsite poligion1.blogspot.com, I noted that the
only way the income tax property tax swap will work is if the income tax
revenue received for schools would be kept separate from general revenues. But we learned a long time ago from the
social security trust fund that politicians will never leave money lying
around. They will spend it with the
promise of paying it back, which they never do.
Quinn’s plan throws all the money in one pot, so the ‘biggest’ bills get
paid first, and property taxes will keep rising as the schools continue to get
no help from the state.
So when all is said and done, the temporary tax becomes
permanent, every property owner gets a bone, and schools are no better off than
they were before. The amount of that 2% tax will grow as your
income grows, but that $500 rebate will stay the same for 15 years while the
value of the dollar continues to shrink.
The goal is to get more tax money so they can spend it on things that buy
them political capital. And they think
this will work.