Pritzker the taxer

While nationally Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is known for his knee-jerk opposition to President Trump, the Chicago billionaire is known here as a taxer.

From Diana Rickert in the Daily Caller.

Illinoisans pay the single highest state and local taxes in the nation, according to WalletHub. With each year of Pritzker’s tenure, it gets worse. 

 According to the Illinois Policy Institute, Pritzker has enacted more than 50 tax increases since taking office in 2019, many of them affecting low and middle-income residents. This summer, the state’s second highest-in-the-nation gas tax is set to increase, again. The most recent state budget paves the way for higher property taxes, higher municipal grocery taxes, taxes on short-term rental properties like Airbnb and Vrbo, as well as new taxes on sports betting and businesses. Pritzker personally orchestrated the tax hammer dropped this year on nicotine pouches like Zyn and Rogue, per a Republican consultant and longtime tobacco harm reduction advocate who worked in opposition to it. 

Not only are taxes on nicotine-delivering products very regressive (and Pritzker purports to speak for the poor). In other blue states that have pursued those kinds of taxes, scientists who study tobacco harm reduction have plainly stated that driving prices up—especially while leaving taxes on traditional, combustible cigarettes alone—drives people to smoke. Let’s be real: these aren’t the type of taxes that are going to hurt the Pritzker family budget. And if a Pritzker develops a chronic disease from choices that stem directly from pricing dictated by Pritzker taxes, they’ll have no problem paying all the best doctors and nurses to fix it. He can tax his way from here to oblivion and have the money to cover it. Not so for your average Illinoisan.