New leadership, same attitude about Illinois state income tax increase, survey finds.Illinois might have new leadership presiding in the governor’s office, but the state still faces the same-old pressing challenges with regard to the budget.The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University conducted a poll this fall to gauge registered voters’ opposition and support to an income tax hike extension. It found 56.1 percent of respondents oppose extending the income tax rate of 5 percent, of which 32.6 percent strongly opposed, according to the findings. Similarly, 32 percent said they either favor or strongly favor extending the income tax increase.
“Regardless of your feelings about state taxation, reducing the income tax increase from 5 percent to 3.75 percent on December 31 would blow a massive hole in the state’s budget,” said David Yepsen, director of the Simon Institute. “But extending or making permanent the ‘temporary’ increase will be difficult for legislators to do because of the strong opposition. So what should a governor and a legislature do: keep an unpopular tax increase, or make draconian cuts?”
When compared to a Simon Poll conducted in March, support and opposition for an extension to the income tax increase seem to be growing and shrinking, respectively.
“Opposition to keeping the income tax is not surprising,” said Simon Institute Visiting Professor Charlie Leonard, one of the supervisors of the poll. “Politicians promising to cut taxes and to increase services have become, unfortunately, a dishonest part of the game of campaigning.”
The Simon Institute also noticed change in a budget-preference question that’s been asking voters since 2010 how they believe the Illinois budget deficit should be fixed: cutting waste and inefficiency; tax increases; combination of spending cuts and tax hikes.
Here are the three statements read to respondents:
- “Illinois public programs and services have already been reduced significantly. We can only fix the issue by taking in more revenue, such as a tax increase.”
- “The state takes in plenty of money to pay for public services, but wastes it on unnecessary programs. We can fix the problem by cutting waste and inefficiency in government.”
- Illinois’ budget problem is so large it can only be solved by a combination of budget cuts and revenue increases.”
“What we may be seeing in the time series results, after many years of coverage of Illinois’ budget problems, is the beginning of a public realization that the state has to pay the piper—that the money to run government services has to come from taxes and fees,” Leonard said. “It doesn’t come from bake sales.”
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Kevin Hoffman is a Reboot Illinois staff writer who graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in journalism, political science and international studies. He believes keeping citizens informed and politicians in check is the best way to improve Illinois and bring about common sense reform. Follow us on Facebook.