Of course, come election time, you'll hear some incumbents trying to tell Illinois residents that the F stands for fabulous, fantastic, or just freaking awesome.
Coming on the heels of last week's news that Illinois has the highest taxes in the entire nation, we get a report that looks at Illinois' gas taxes and compares them to the rest of the country. We're not the highest, but...
If you've lived here in Illinois for any significant length of time, you already know that you're paying a lot in taxes of all sorts. But did you know that our state was taking this much from you?
So here's the great news as we head into a holiday weekend where more Illinoisans will be driving somewhere than we have in a decade: The new gas taxes kick in today.
As you probably already know, Illinois leads the Midwest (and is near the top in the nation) in outbound migration. When people who are moving out of our state are asked why, the number one reason, by a wide margin, is a one-word answer: taxes.
It's not just a couple of million dollars more, either. The Illinois Department of Revenue says that sales of recreational weed has produced nearly $121 million in tax revenue for Illinois, compared to about $99 million for wine, beer, and/or spirits.
I'm sure that you'll recall that recreational weed sales started in Illinois in January of 2020. MedicalMarijuana.net reports that total sales numbers, including both medical and recreational, topped $1 billion dollars by December. That’s over 14.5 million products sold, and 25% of that went to out-of-state residents.
No matter how you look at it, 35 percent is a huge number of small businesses that have either temporarily or permanently closed their doors because of COVID-19.
There was some concern that Illinois wouldn't follow along with the federal government in extending the tax deadline, but at the end of last week, Governor Pritzker decided to get on board the tax deadline extension bandwagon.