Senate Republicans remain adamant that Illinois’ future growth cannot be based on a tax-and-spend system, urging lawmakers to stop outspending revenue and doing more to undercut the crushing burdens placed on the backs of Illinois’ taxpayers and businesses.
They pointed to a recent comparison from the personal financial website WalletHub that ranked Illinois as having the worst tax burden in the nation. Claiming a total state and local tax rate median of nearly 15 percent, Illinois falls dead last in the ranking. That figure is more than double of that in Alaska, which has the lowest tax burden of approximately 6 percent.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia were compared using four factors including, real-estate tax, vehicle property tax, income tax and sales and excise tax.
This ranking comes months after Illinois taxpayers were strapped with the largest permanent income tax hike in Illinois’ history, raising the rate from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent this past July.