Prairie State voters on Nov. 4 will make their voices heard on what’s turned out to be a wedge issue in the contentious Illinois gubernatorial race: a tax hike on millionaires.
But that’s all they’ll get to do — the ballot measure is nonbinding, merely allowing residents to express their opinions rather than changing tax policy.
The Tax for Education Question asks citizens if they want to amend the constitution to add another 3 percent tax on individuals earning more than $1 million, to fund education.
Illinois is a flat tax state, so individuals of all income levels pay a 5 percent rate.
But that will drop to 3.75 percent at the beginning of 2015 because of the expiration of a 2011 income surtax. That’s going to leave a revenue gap, according to Gov. Pat Quinn’s budget office — so he and the Democrats proposed filling the hole by hiking levies on the wealthier.
They tried to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot this year but failed to garner the three-fifths legislative approval required. Now they’re settling for the nonbinding ballot measure, which they hope will give their colleagues the cover to vote for the tax hike down the road.
Meanwhile, opponents of the measure are accusing Democrats of flooding the ballot with nonbinding red-meat measures that attract liberals — like this one and a minimum wage hike — who would vote for Quinn over his neck-and-neck GOP challenger, Bruce Rauner, who opposes the tax.
The article doesn't mention all of the ballot questions in Illinois (voting rights, minimum wage, birth control, and crime victims rights), so you can probably assume that the article isn't a comprehensive source for the various ballot measures around the country.
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