FLAT TAX CREATED 'SCARCITY MENTALITY;' FAIR TAX WOULD FUND HUMAN SERVICES by Suzanne Hanney
It’s a been a 50-year struggle to get a progressive income tax amendment on the Illinois ballot, and if it doesn’t pass November 3, the state will have to find other means of generating revenue to balance its budget, says John Bouman, recently retired president and CEO of the Shriver Center on Poverty Law and now chairman of Vote Yes for Fair Tax. Illinoisans currently pay a flat tax of 4.95 percent. But the flat tax is unfair, or “regressive,” Bouman said during a webinar for Illinois Partners for Human Service, because a family making $30,000 pays the same rate as one making $3 million. The flat tax is a much bigger share of the low-income family’s income. What’s more, the current system relies more on lower- and middle-income people than on those at the top; in the process, the state’s greatest way of generating revenue is failing the whole system. Only 3 percent of Illinoisans – those with incomes above $250,000 -- would pay more than the current 4.95 percent under the progressive income tax proposal on the November ballot, Bouman said. Also, the topmost rate of 7.99 “compares favorably with Wisconsin and Iowa and is well below Minnesota” (see ropposite page). Meanwhile, everyone making less than $100,000, or 85 percent of the population – would pay less than 4.95 percent.
“IT’S NOT TRUE WE’RE TRYING TO DUMP ON EVERYONE WHO’S GOT MONEY, WE’RE JUST TRYING TO BRING LLLINOIS INTO THE MAINSTREAM AND MAKE THIS THING MORE FAIR.” -JOHN BOUMAN
“This is not some radical thing. It brings Illinois into the mainstream and takes it out of the laughingstock of late night TV, of being such a sick state,” Bouman said. “It’s not true we’re trying to dump on everyone who’s got money, we’re just trying to bring lllinois into the mainstream and make this thing more fair.” The progressive/fair tax proposal doesn’t give the Illinois General Assembly any new power other than to calibrate the new tax. When opponents say it will allow the state to tax retirement income, “they tell a lie,” Bouman said. “No, it won’t.” But the measure will address the 5 percent budget cuts proposed for this year and 10 percent for next year in a way that doesn’t further burden lower- and working-class people, he said. “We have all been operating in time of scarcity so long that it’s hard to visualize a system that works,” said Sam Tuttle, former director of policy at Heartland Alliance and current committee director, Vote Yes for Fair Tax, during the Illinois Partners webinar. The $3.2 billion expected to be raised from a progressive tax “would give all of us brain space to be creative, to do all the things we want to do that the stress has taken away from us.” Human services encompass everything from childcare to elder care, substance abuse and mental health treatment, disability services, workforce development and more. The sector has been systematically underfunded and is now down to 16 percent of the Illinois general revenue fund from 26 percent in 1997, said Lauren Wright, executive director of Illinois Partners for Human Service. But in a global pandemic that has demonstrated an exaggerated effect on low-income and minority people, you can’t have a robust response without human services, Wright said.
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