cmonkey wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:11 am
New York has high state taxes, so yea I'd believe it. Illinois is catching up, though, they just bumped up their tax rate from 3% to 4.95% and
it still doesn't solve anything. So I'm now $110 poorer each month.
If we were smart, once I start my new job we'd move to SD, but alas we are locked to our land. Getting out of Illinois is absolutely on the table long term though, I have no interest in being a part of the first "investment haircut" experiment carried out in the US.
Yeah, I've had about enough of the Chicago/IL bullsh**.
When I have decided I've earned/saved "enough" from my high-paying-job, or if I get laid off, I will be heading for the exit. Fast.
I've been here working nearly 15 years since being out of college.
A handful of these facts about the taxes here wouldn't be so bad, but when you put it all together, it is extremely ridiculous. Let's see... Yeah, not all of these affect me, but the point is, the trend of them to tax anything-and-everything:
- Chicago has the highest sales tax (I think) of any locale in the entire country, 10.25%
- There is a 2.25% sales tax on unprepared/grocery food items even!
- They tax 5 cents per bottle on purchasing bottled water.
- They just recently replaced a (failed) "ban" on plastic shopping bags with a new tax on disposable shopping bags.
- As of today, there is a new tax on any "sweetened beverages" you purchase in the whole county, 1 cent per ounce.
- Property taxes among the highest in the nation (second to only New Jersey I think?)
- Income tax this year jacked up to 4.95% (NOT-PROGRESSIVE, it is a flat rate.) They also hardly let you deduct ANYTHING off of your state taxes, outside property taxes. (From using the numbers on your federal return, IL makes you ADD BACK much of the income you've deducted -- mortgage interest, and most everything else.) Additionally, any dividend income is hit by the full 4.95% rate, as are both the long and short term capital gains.
- The taxes on a pack of cigarettes in Chicago is $7.42
- In addition to the 10.25% sales tax (and in addition to the sweetened beverage tax), there are additional excise taxes on any alcohol purchased (13.5% I think?)
- For my own personal condo, the property taxes went up 60% in 2016 over what they were in 2015. Then this year in 2017, they went up another 10% again on top of the increase from the prior year.
- They enacted a couple special "cloud taxes" and "internet streaming" taxes. So for you cord-cutters, there are taxes on your Netflix and other online streaming video and music subscriptions. Any company offering "cloud" services is also taxed.
- Of my $30 monthly cell phone bill, about 1/3 ($10) of it is taxes
- Fortunately, I don't own a car here... but I can only imagine how ridiculously expensive it must be. I've heard that if you lease a car, you have to pay the full sales tax on it up-front as if you had actually purchased the car. You also need to pay an annual fee to buy a "sticker" for having your car in the city of Chicago (this is in additional to the annual registration fee from the state.) Plus all of the "red light cameras" and "speedtrap cameras" all over the city...
This is too much. There is no way that I will be staying here.
Yeah, I make (what I consider to be) a ridiculously huge salary at a job here -- but once that is over, I'll be heading for the exit.
What is happening here is not sustainable. I'm mostly a liberal, politically speaking. However, these taxes are out of control, and they have been doing very little, if anything, to rein in spending. As a taxpayer (a big taxpayer due to my income) in IL/Chicago, I feel like I'm being used as an ATM for the pensions of the public sector workers... (And don't get me started on how worthless I think some of the public sector workers are here... They take the definition of laziness/uselessness to a whole new level.)
Sorry... I needed to rant.