Idiot’s Guide to the Illinois Fair Tax Amendment

How should I know what's good for me? The wise men all say I don't!

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If only this woman had read the Chicago Tribune editorials, she wouldn’t want to “Tax the Rich.” Photo by Timothy Krause, 9.17.12 (CC BY 2.0) Flickr 

Urgent:  I need help! I’m so stressed out about Nov. 3. I not only have to decide whether I should vote for a normal politician over a racist nutter, I also have to decide whether I should vote “Yes” for an amendment that will lower my taxes!

“Yes” sounds like the smart vote. But all the wise men are telling me, for my own good and the good of all Illinois, to vote “No.”

What to do, what to do?

I thought I knew what was good for me, but then I read the Chicago Tribune editorials, and the sage counsels of the Chicago Civic Foundation, and the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, and the Illinois Manufacturers Association. And I read that letter Ken Griffin sent to his 1000 employees. Ken’s the wisest (and richest) billionaire in Illinois. He is so sincere in his conviction that the amendment would raise taxes on billionaires that he donated $53.75 million, of his own money, to defeat it!

Fifty million! Now that, that, is an honest man! And the Illinois Policy Institute … have to credit them, they’re a THINK TANK!

Well, I was a philosophy major, so I should be able to figure this out on my own.  Not French postmodern philosophy, no, that’s even deeper than the Tribune editorials.

No, no, no! I studied the Anglo-American way, analytic philosophy. Ordinary Language Dept. My teachers were students of students of Ludwig Wittgenstein, so I know that my difficulty with political language is really quite simple: It makes no sense. Ludwig tells me, Once you see that political language is just BS, then you’re not confused any more.

So here is my guide to the muddle over the tax amendment: I will translate the arguments of the wise men into ordinary language.

But first, my admittedly naive and foolish first impression, based on what the amendment says. It says that voting “yes” would “remove the portion of the Revenue Article of the Illinois Constitution that is sometimes referred to as the ‘flat tax,’ that requires all taxes on income to be at the same rate. The amendment does not itself change tax rates. It gives the State the ability to impose higher tax rates on those with higher income levels and lower income tax rates on those with middle or lower income levels.”

OK, so the legislature and governor would be able to tax me less and rich people more. They would just have to decide on the tax rates.

Uh-oh. The amendment says that sleazy politicians can pass a law to raise taxes on us oompaloompas. And you know how they like to pass laws to hurt us.

But wait, they already passed a law, a year ago in June!  SB 687. This can’t be right — that law says if we vote “yes,” for the Fair Tax Amendment, they will raise taxes a lot — not on us, but on rich people! Right now, like the rest of us, the millionaires and billionaires pay the same 4.95% on their yearly income.  But with SB 687, they’d have to pay 7.99% on anything they earned over $1 million, and everyone who earns $250,000  or less will end up paying less. That’s 97 % of Illinois taxpayers.

Here’s where it gets strange
So here’s where it gets strange. Why do the wise men say we 97 percenters should vote “No” on the Fair Tax, when voting “Yes” saves us a whole lot of money — and also brings a lot more money into the state treasury that can pay for schools, or affordable housing, or health care, and (if that’s really what you want) more cops. (Nah, they’ll give us more cops anyway.)

Well, it should be obvious. The wise men have four simple CPT’s (Compelling Talking Points).

First CPT:  They say it’s a slippery slope. The amendment wouldn’t let the sleazy politicians raise our taxes next year — but what about the year after that, and the year after that, and … ? True, the state would need to pass another law to raise taxes.

And then they would run for election again.

So maybe it’s not an easy law to pass. But the wise men have another CPT!

Billionaires love to buy sports teams. Here they sent the Tax Dodgers to bat against Occupy Wall Street’s tax terrorists. Photo by Timothy Krause (but the caption is, you guessed it, mine). 9.17.12. (CC BY 2.0) Flickr

Second CPT: The wise men say the sleazy politicians will be able to tax our retirement income. Right now, Illinois is one of the 12 states that don’t tax social security, pensions, 401 (k)s. The wise men say if we vote “Yes” that will change and sleazy politicians will come for my Social Security check. Maybe a teeny problem here: Nothing in the Fair Tax Amendment or in SB687 says anything about retirement income. And don’t the wise men know what will happen to legislators who try to tax our Social Security? We retirees do vote a lot. That’s OK, the wise men have another CPT!

Third CPT: The Fair Tax Amendment is just another greedy grab for money by the special interests. That’s so true! Special interests do want the Fair Tax — the AARP, the League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, the Latino Policy Forum, and those unions of teachers and health care workers and firefighters.

Wait, aren’t those special interests our special interests? Unlike the special interests trying to defeat the Fair Tax — the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, and the Illinois Manufacturers Association. Those are the special interests of the superrich like Ken Griffin, Sam Zell, Craig Duchossois.  Maybe the wise men need another CPT.

Fourth CPT: True, the amendment would bring in $3.4 billion to the state. But the politicians would just squander that money! Sounds right. The choice is between letting Ken Griffin squander his money, or letting the sleazy politicians take his money and squander it.

Which sounds better? Let me think.

OK, the sleazy politicians will squander it, but they’ll squander it on salaries for teachers and social workers, maybe some new schools and clinics. Maybe have money to replace those old pipes putting lead in our drinking water. I think the wise men need another CPT.

Fifth CPT:**  The amendment would be bad for the economy. Not according to the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability: “Not only will the revenue from the Fair Tax prevent cuts in service spending, but the additional tax relief could result in additional consumer spending, resulting in growth of both jobs and the state’s economy.” This is getting sad. Isn’t there another CPT?

Sixth CPT.**  I like this Compelling Talking Point the best! If we pass the Fair Tax Amendment, the rich people will all move out of Illinois to some state that will love them more and tax them less. Ken Griffin would move to … South Bend? Instead of serving on the boards of the Art Institute and the MCA, he could serve on the board of the South Bend Museum of Art. That would be just the ego boost he would need after Illinois breaks his heart.

The wise men are strangely reluctant to bring up the most Compelling Talking Point of all, so I’ll help them out here. It’s simple really: The real reason the wise men hate fair tax is because paying taxes is so traumatic. We all know that. Logically, the more you pay, the greater the trauma.

I’ve given this some thought and now I see my problem clearly. I lack empathy. I just don’t care about rich people’s trauma, so I’m going to vote “Yes.” I guess I’m just a bit sociopathic in the empathy-for-rich-people department.

My empathy stops somewhere short of $250,000/yr. Where does yours stop?
—Paul Elitzik

*Technically, rich people’s lobbies and PACs and emotional support groups aren’t “special interests,” according to the Chicago Tribune’s Style Manual. And, of course, while the Tribune editorial board don’t qualify as special interests, they do qualify as their flacks.

**Oh, please! So there are five, or six, and not four CPTs. I was a philosophy major, not a math major.

Suggested Reading:

Here’s what SB 687 says, summarized by NBC Chicago: “For single and joint filers earning less than $250,000 per year, the first $10,000 would be taxed at 4.75%, then income between that and $100,000 would be taxed at 4.9%. From there, up to $250,000, the rate would be 4.95%, where it stands today.”

Here at “The Fair Tax Calculator” you can calculate how much less you would pay if the amendment passes.

Map by leading Chicago cartographer Fred Klonsky, in “Pass the Graduated Income Tax Amendment. A Tax Map of Illinois,” Oct. 30, 2020. You can find quite a few short articles on the Fair Tax Amendment in his blog, all with Compelling Talking Points. (But they’re OUR talking points.)

For more on the Illinois Fair Tax Amendment:

“Everything You Need to Know About the ‘Fair Tax’ | Center for Tax and Budget Accountability,” October 16, 2020.

Image: Ballot wording for Illinois Fair Tax Amendment.

“Illinois’s Flat Tax Exacerbates Income Inequality and Racial Wealth Gaps,” ITEP: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, September 17, 2020.

“The Fair Tax would increase effective tax rates by 2.4 percent for the top 1 percent while cutting taxes for taxpayers whose incomes fall in the bottom 95 percent (Figure 3), improving Illinois’s tax system from the 8th most regressive in the nation to the 20th.” ITEP Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

“How a Graduated Rate Income Tax Would Help Reduce After-Tax Income Inequality in Illinois | Center for Tax and Budget Accountability,” May 22, 2019.

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