Posted on 07/15/2015 5:26:25 PM PDT by george76
Cook County Board today cleared the way for President Toni Preckwinkle's plan to raise the county's sales tax a penny on the dollar, mostly for pensions.
The action came when the board's Finance Committee, which includes all board members, voted 9 to 7 to 1 to send the $474 million a year tax hike to the full board, which will consider it later today.
The key votes came from Commissioner Luis Arroyo, a Chicago Democrat who voted "yes," and suburban Republican Elizabeth Gorman, who cast a "present" ballot and who is widely rumored to soon be headed to a new, private-sector job. Immediately after the Finance Committee vote, Gorman announced her resignation.
Preckwinkle has said that she will take another look at the levy is state lawmakers approve a pension reform plan that would cut the county's retirement costs. But foes charge that the levy might undercut that position and it would place county businesses at a competitive disadvantage by hiking the combined sales tax in Chicago to 10.25 percent.
That figure appears to give the metropolitan area the highest combined sales tax of any major region in the country.
Though expected, the vote approving the tax hike followed a bitter board debate that lasted well over four hours and which, at times, had commissioners taking personal shots at each other and their motives. In general, the proposal drew votes from African-American and Latino commissioners from the inner city and poor suburban areas and Democratic commissioners from the north part of the city and county and suburban Republicans.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagobusiness.com ...
” hiking the combined sales tax in Chicago to 10.25 percent. ....”
What could possibly go wrong ?
... so what will people do? Try like heck not to spend much money in Cook County!
Public unions destroy everything they touch.
Chicago will be Detroit in 6 years...
It’s economic fuel for NW Indiana LOL.
Cross border shopping.
The state line on the Indiana side has hundreds of places selling booze, cigs, and gasoline to Chicagoland folks.
Indeed it does. The collar counties will also benefit.
L
And basically nothing more than coffee, donuts, and fast food will be bought or sold in Cook County.
Exactly. Indiana biz loves Chicago : )
And the death spiral extends beyond the city limits . . .
Pennies are such a pain. They should probably round it up to the nearest nickle./s
Exactly correct. I live on the Will County side of the Cook/Will County Line. There are ALOT of people who cross over into Will County to buy everything from gas (which is taxed heavily in Crook County) Food and all the other things they need.
Our retail base here is BOOMING because of Cook County's high taxes.
However, "hiking the combined sales tax in Chicago to 10.25 percent" is something that I just can't believe won't have a major effect on Chicago's economy.
No matter what the fiscal problem is, the only answer democrat socialists have is “raise taxes”.
They never curb spending. They just want everyone else to curb their spending.
This is not leadership. This is not servant leadership. It is not problem solving. If it were, this “solution” would have fixed a million budget problems by now.
They never get the projected taxes because they never take into account the decrease in the taxed activity due to the increased taxation.
They never add this factor in on purpose. They ignore it deliberately.
They ignore it deliberately because otherwise they would be admitting that increasing taxes have a significantly negative impact on whatever is being taxed more.
I suppose if the revenues fall short of the projected $474 million increase, they’ll just raise the sales tax some more.
At some point, someone is going to realize that this free lunch the Dems keep giving away actually isn't free.
Plenty do and move away.
Then the democrats blame them for moving away.
And then the taxed behavior goes down further.
And goes more and more black market, if possible.
I don’t know about that. If Chicago can get El Chapo to take up residence there as the head of the Sinaloa Cartel it could bring thousands of new jobs and thousands of customers for the cartel’s products.
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