Unlike the federal government, the State of Illinois exempts all retirement income from the individual income tax. Of the 41 states that impose an income tax, Illinois is one of only three that exempt all pension income and one of 27 that exclude all federally taxed Social Security income, according to a report from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. The Illinois Comptroller estimates that this exemption of federally taxable retirement income reduced the State’s individual income…
This article reviews the findings of Illinois’ Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for fiscal year 2013, which shows Illinois is still in the worst financial shape of the 50 states, but it’s rate of deterioration has slowed. The Civic Federation the State’s continued deficit is driven by increased costs for pensions and retiree health care.
This article discusses an $883 million bond sale by the City of Chicago that will largely be used for debt refinancing and short-term expenses. The Civic Federation said a well-managed government would not be issuing debt to pay for its operating expenses and added that the refinancing practice known as “scoop and toss” increases the total cost of borrowing and the burden to taxpayers.
This article discusses Illinois’ March 11 sale of taxable revenue-backed bonds in the context of the State’s temporary income tax increase scheduled to rollback in January 2015. It cites the Civic Federation’s recommendation to gradually reduce income tax rates by 20% after extending the rates for one year in 2015 to avoid a sharp revenue cliff.
This editorial highlights the recommendations in the Civic Federation’s State of Illinois FY2015 Budget Roadmap and calls the Federation’s plan a thoughtful, comprehensive approach to the State Budget that offers a solid starting point for discussion. Recommendations include building a rainy day fund that totals at least 5% of General Funds revenues.
This editorial examines the Civic Federation’s State of Illinois FY2015 Budget Roadmap and calls the Federation’s plan a “reasonable and balanced approach” to addressing Illinois’ perpetual fiscal crisis. The Federation’s recommendations would allow the State to eliminate its $5.4 billion bill backlog in five years.
This article focuses on the Civic Federation’s recommendation for Illinois to include federally taxable amounts of retirement income in its income tax base. Of the 41 states that impose an income tax, Illinois is one of only three that exempt all pension income. The recommendation was part of the State of Illinois FY2015 Budget Roadmap.
Four weeks ago, the Civic Federation blogged about the Chicago City Council granting the City authority to issue general obligation (GO) bonds for the payment of various capital projects and legal judgments, as well as refunding and restructuring debt. As part of that plan, the City is expected to sell $388.0 million in GO bonds on March 6, 2014. In anticipation of this bond sale, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the City’s credit rating from A3 to Baa1, giving Chicago a lower credit rating…
In its recently released FY2015 budget roadmap report, the Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability at the Civic Federation recommended that the State of Illinois publish a five-year financial plan and that the plan be updated annually. This recommendation follows a best practice of the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), which urges every government to use long-term financial planning to align financial capacity with long-term service objectives. According to the GFOA, such…
This article looks at findings of the Civic Federation’s State of Illinois FY2015 Budget Roadmap released by the Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability on March 3. The State’s General Funds revenues are projected to decline by $3.9 billion between FY2014 and FY2016 due to the scheduled partial rollback of the income tax increase. The Federation’s report presents a plan to avoid the pending revenue cliff by gradually rolling back tax rates.
