Pritzker ‘fair’ tax could cost typical Batavia family nearly $2,000

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker claims his progressive income tax will only affect the rich. But using the rates of states he wants to use as models, middle-income Illinoisans would see significant tax hikes.

Though Gov. J.B. Pritzker has mentioned Wisconsin and Iowa as models for a fairer income tax, the typical Illinois family in Batavia could pay nearly $2,000 in additional taxes each year with either of those states’ income tax rates.

A median income family with two children making $116,378 in Batavia would see a $1,915 tax hike if Illinois adopted Iowa’s rates and a $1,007 tax hike if Illinois adopted Wisconsin’s rates. Those would be 36 percent and 19 percent increases, respectively.

Calling the rate structure a “fair tax,” Pritzker cited these two states in his 2019 budget address as examples for Illinois to follow. Specifically, he said Illinois “can accomplish” a progressive income tax with a “more competitive rate structure than Wisconsin and Iowa,” though it’s unclear how he’s defining competition. Batavia residents – already dealing with high property taxes and an income tax just hiked in 20172017 that followed a prior record hike in 2011 – might not agree that yet another tax hike is either fair or competitive.

Experts second that. A recent Tax Foundation study on Wisconsin’s tax code went so far as to recommend exchanging its progressive income tax for a flat income tax as one way to make the state more competitive. This is a move both North Carolina and Kentucky have made in recent years.

The only state in the past 30 years to embrace a progressive tax was Connecticut. That state has since seen its economy founder, lost residents and suffered more poverty for those left behind – all while state income taxes and property taxes have both grown and the state still spends more than it receives in most years.

Pritzker’s “fair tax” isn’t the only progressive-tax idea floating around in Springfield that should have middle-class taxpayers worried, either. Another progressive income tax proposal introduced in 2017 would have raised income taxes on Illinoisans earning as little as $17,300 a year.

With either proposal, the middle class gets hit hard, despite Pritzker’s fairness rhetoric. Illinois families cannot afford another tax hike, and it certainly wouldn’t be fair to push one on them.