Battle of billionaires: Griffin slams Pritzker push for graduated income tax amendment

The Chicago Tribune ^ | October 22, 2020 | By Rick Pearson

[PBRCat]

Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin slammed Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker as “a shameless master of personal tax avoidance” Thursday in an email to his Chicago employees that criticized the governor’s push for a graduated-income tax rate amendment.

“I am not willing to stand by as, once again, spineless politicians try to sell a trick disguised as a solution. Particularly not from a governor who, having inherited a great deal of wealth, has worked so diligently to avoid paying taxes himself,” Griffin wrote in an email obtained by the Tribune, which was verified by a company spokesman.

“Not only does he hold a significant portion of his wealth in well-documented offshore trusts which pay no state income taxes, he even went so far as to remove toilets from his house in Chicago to achieve an appraisal at a fraction of the home’s value. A porcelain case study in irony,” Griffin said.

A month before his election in November 2018, Pritzker agreed to repay the Cook County treasurer’s office more than $330,000 in property tax breaks and tax refunds that the county’s inspector general contended he obtained as a result of a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers. That included the removal of toilets to help obtain a property tax reduction from an adjoining Gold Coast mansion he purchased.

[PBRCat]

The toilet tax dodger wants Illinois voters to approve an amendment to hike their own taxes while hiding his own wealth.

[BlessedBeGod]

This will kill seniors.

[Lurker]

The “fair tax” is going to go down in flames.

L

[Stosh]

The democrat slime in Illinois have been trying to sell this end run around the state’s flat tax as a way of getting even with billionaires. Whenever I talk to anyone about this scam, I emphasize it’s a change in the *income* tax structure - and billionaires don’t work for their income. Their money works for their income, and it’s easy to find ways to earn money on investments that are tax free.

As more and more Illinoisans are starting to realize, that tax initiative is just a way for the Machine to eventually have an opening to raising taxes on the middle class without ticking off the entire populace, who would otherwise have their taxes go up in the current flat tax scenario.