McHenry Times

State Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva) is troubled by every aspect of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s progressive income tax proposal.

“It seems he’s not as interested in saving taxpayers' money as he is in finding new ways to collect and spend it,” Ugaste told the McHenry Times. “You look at our budget and all our spending and there are plenty of ways we could save money before getting to the point of needing to tax people even more to generate more revenues.”

Ugaste sees the governor’s progressive tax proposal as laying the foundation for more of the same.  

“It’s being touted as fair tax, but right now under the current flat tax system the state’s top 1 percent already pay 23% of all income taxes collected,” he said. “To impose additional taxes on an already highly taxed state will just chase more people away, and if it’s the high earners we’ll also be losing the revenue they were already paying.”

Ugaste said stripping away the protections he feels the flat tax provide and essentially giving lawmakers a blank check to tax seems to make it all seem worth it to the governor.

Indeed, the Chicago Tribune reports he recently contributed $51 million to a ballot initiative committee working to sell the measure to voters before November. Vote Yes to Fairness, a committee headed by the governor’s former deputy campaign manager, recently received the funds and is already at work selling the idea of abandoning the state’s current flat tax to a progressive tax system.

In addition to being the only individual to contribute more than $250, Pritzker’s latest gift comes on a top of an earlier donation of $5 million.

“With graduated tax, you can pick and choose who and how to tax,” Ugaste added. “This is just another tax increase in disguise because before it’s over they’re going to have to tax everyone to make the revenues enough. What we need to do is stop looking at ways in this state to tax those that remain and start looking to expand our tax base.”