Fact-check: Attack ad should lay off calling Pritzker’s plan a ‘jobs tax’

SHARE Fact-check: Attack ad should lay off calling Pritzker’s plan a ‘jobs tax’
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Greg Baise, left, then president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, meets with the Sun-Times Editorial Board in 2016. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times; Gov. J.B. Pritzker, right, stops to survey flood maps of Downstate Freeport last week. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star via AP)

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has taken the first step toward making good on a major campaign promise by outlining a plan to replace Illinois’ flat-rate income tax with a system that would tax higher levels of income at higher rates.

Pritzker wants lawmakers to put a measure on the 2020 ballot asking voters to approve a constitutional amendment giving them authority to replace Illinois’ flat-rate income tax, currently set at 4.95 percent for all taxpayers, with a series of graduated rates. He says the rate structure he’s proposing would generate billions in new revenue by raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest 3 percent, while either providing modest cuts to — or holding the line for — those who make less.

But a business-linked group run by former Illinois Manufacturers’ Association President Greg Baise is out with an ad warning middle-class Illinoisans to watch their wallets.

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“Pritzker and [Democratic House Speaker Michael] Madigan want to change the constitution to allow a permanent jobs tax on middle-class families,” a narrator says before going on to argue Springfield politicians can’t be trusted after hiking taxes in previous years. “They’re putting a constitutional amendment on your 2020 ballot, paving the way for their jobs tax on the middle class.”

Baise’s new group, Ideas Illinois, is clearly referring to Pritzker’s plan for a graduated income tax. But just about everything else about the ad couldn’t be fuzzier, so we decided to take a closer look.

Not a ‘permanent jobs tax’

 While there’s no official definition for a “jobs tax,” it is clear Pritzker’s plan doesn’t contain one.

Experts we spoke with noted the term gets used colloquially to describe so-called head taxes like one Chicago once levied on larger employers. But that in no way resembles what Pritzker is proposing.

Richard Auxier, a research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said it is “completely incorrect” to use the term “jobs tax” to refer to a graduated income tax proposal.

“The income tax is not on people, it is on your income,” he said.

Auxier also dismissed the ad’s contention that amending the constitution to allow for graduated rates would make permanent whatever rates Pritzker and state lawmakers eventually decide to enact.

“There is no such thing as a permanent tax increase,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is come back and change the law.”

The ad itself underscores that point by referencing past tax hikes and drops. Since its inception in 1969, Illinois’ individual income tax rate has changed eight times, rising and falling and rising again before hitting 3 percent in 1990, then ping ponging up to 5 percent in 2011, down to 3.75 percent in 2015 and back up to 4.95 percent in 2017.

The middle-class connection

 There are two parts to Pritzker’s tax plan, and neither would appear to raise taxes on the middle class. Step one involves that constitutional amendment, which only if approved would then allow Pritzker to ask lawmakers to set graduated tax rates that charge more to the wealthy.

Pritzker has floated a plan for that new rate menu, which he says would cut taxes for the vast majority of Illinois taxpayers. Only those with incomes over $250,000 a year would pay more, the governor says.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker unveils his graduated income tax plan during a press conference in the governor’s office at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield earlier this month. File Photo. (Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP)

Gov. J.B. Pritzker unveils his graduated income tax plan during a press conference in the governor’s office at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield earlier this month. File Photo. (Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP)

It’s entirely possible Pritzker’s plan for rates could change. It’s also possible lawmakers could approve it as is then raise rates down the line. That’s what the ad hints at.

But it’s important to note that lawmakers can hike the flat income tax rate now, a power Ideas Illinois even stresses. That renders nonsensical its ominous warnings.

We reached out to Baise for clarification through several email and phone contacts, but he did not respond. Also unanswered were questions we posed to Ideas Illinois, a project of a non-profit advocacy group called the Illinois Coalition of Jobs, Growth and Prosperity long linked to Republican powerbroker Ron Gidwitz, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Belgium.

So we asked tax experts to take a stab at deciphering the group’s underlying message.

“I think what they’re trying to say is that this increased income tax will decrease the number of jobs in the state,” said Carol Portman, president of the nonpartisan Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois.

Indeed, Baise made that case in a commentary piece in The Chicago Tribune published before Pritzker unveiled the specifics of his tax plan, arguing that raising taxes on income above a certain level “will accelerate the push of already-struggling job creators out of Illinois.”

Greg Baise, then president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, meets with the Sun-Times Editorial Board in 2016. File Photo. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Greg Baise, then president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, meets with the Sun-Times Editorial Board in 2016. File Photo. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

But Portman said studies on the effects of different tax rates on job growth at the state level are incredibly mixed. “You can find numbers that are real and true to support just about any argument you want to make,” she explained. “It’s so hard to isolate.”

A 2015 Tax Policy Center report wryly noted that recent studies have variously found that tax cuts “raise, reduce, do not affect, or have no clear effect on growth.” The results of the center’s own research indicated that neither the amount of revenue a state levies under a tax nor how high it set its top marginal rates “bore any stable relation” to economic growth across states and over time.

What’s more, the potential impact on job creators is not an argument the ad itself bothered to tease out.

Chris Mooney, a state politics expert at the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government & Public Affairs, said that’s likely because asking working- and middle-class voters to spare the wealthy from higher taxes is a tough sell. Instead of getting into details, he explained, it can be more effective politically to rely on “classic fear-mongering” techniques.

“It spooks people, and it allows them to think the worst,” Mooney said. “When you’re not specific and you give them vague frames of negativity, they can rush to their own negative place.”

Our ruling

 An ad from the anti-tax organization Ideas Illinois claims Pritzker’s tax plan calls for changing the constitution “to allow a permanent jobs tax on middle class families.”

But Pritzker is proposing an income tax, which is exactly what its name implies: a tax on income, not on jobs. As for permanence, any initial rates set under a graduated tax can be revised up or down, just like the current flat has been changed in both directions over the last decade.

The only difference is that a rate hike under the flat tax hits all taxpayers, while under a graduated tax it could be engineered to impact only the wealthy.

We rate this claim False. 

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FALSE — The statement is not accurate. 

Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.

The Better Government Association runs PolitiFact Illinois, the local arm of the nationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking enterprise that rates the truthfulness of statements made by governmental leaders and politicians. BGA’s fact-checking service has teamed up weekly with the Sun-Times, in print and online. You can find all of the PolitiFact Illinois stories we’ve reported together here.

Sources

“Gov. Pritzker unveils proposed graduated income tax rates, Republicans balk,” Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 7, 2019

Ad, Ideas Illinois, Mar. 21, 2019

Phone interview: Richard Auxier, research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Mar. 26, 2019

“Mendoza stretches the facts on the commuter tax,” PolitiFact Illinois, Jan. 13, 2019

Individual income tax rates, Illinois Department of Revenue, accessed Mar. 28, 2019

About page, Ideas Illinois, accessed Mar. 29, 2019

Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity: Form 990, ProPublica, accessed Mar. 28, 2019

“Trump nominates his Illinois campaign finance chair as ambassador to Belgium,” Chicago Tribune, May 18, 2018

Phone interview: Carol Portman, president of the Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois, Mar. 26, 2019

“Commentary: Gov. Pritzker’s tax-and-spend plan will drive employers out of Illinois,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 22, 2019

Report: State Tax Cuts Do Not Automatically Lead to Economic Growth, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, Sept. 8, 2015

Phone interview: Chris Mooney, professor of state politics at the University of Illinois, Mar. 27, 2019

Phone interview: J. Fred Giertz, economist at the University of Illinois, Mar. 26, 2019

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