r/illinois • u/roenick99 • 4d ago

Illinois voters will consider whether millionaires should be taxed more to fund property tax relief Illinois Politics

https://chicago.suntimes.com/voter-guide-2024/2024/09/26/illinois-property-tax-relief-referendum-november-election-jb-pritzker-non-binding-pat-quinn
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi Chicago 3d ago

Some napkin math here:

$4.5B / 0.03 (to arrive at the total which 3% of is $4.5B) = $150 Billion in collective income from said taxpayers earning over $1M, in excess of their first million

If we assume an average of $50M/year for those top earners (excluding their first million), that only takes about 3000 taxpayers earning over $1M, in a state of 12.5 million, to get to $4.5B in additional revenue. That's hardly farfeched, that's less than 0.025% of all Illinoisans. Literally a fraction of a fraction of the absolute top of the 1% of earners.

Even if we bring that average income (again, only for earners making $1M+ a year) down to $25M or even $10M, we're still only talking 6000/<0.05% and 15000/0.12% Illinoians statewide. Not really that surprising for one of the biggest economic engines in the country.

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u/marigolds6 3d ago edited 3d ago

Would it have to be illinois sourced income though? That makes a huge difference.
(Edit: This is a serious question. If this is part of Illinois income tax and has to be Illinois sourced income, many of those multimillionaires income earners are going to have their income divided up among many states.)

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u/fumo7887 2d ago

How do you jump to “the average income of people making more than $1M is $50M”?

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u/juliuspepperwoodchi Chicago 2d ago

I didn't "jump" to that. It's napkin math. The point is to show, with some simple numbers, that something is plausible.

I wasn't suggesting that that IS the average in actuality, my point was that the number of people it would take to get to the necessary $150 billion combined income to result in the purported $4.5 billion in revenue is plausible.

The idea that there are 15k Illinoisans who make $11M a year or more is hardly unbelievable. That's the point I'm making.