 Truth In Accounting (TIA), a government transparency organization, published a
report on Monday analyzing what the organization claims is the true financial
health of each state in the nation. The combined debt of all 50 states totaled
more than $1.3 trillion.
Illinois, TIA found, had $118 billion of hidden retirement debt that the state
did not report on its 2014 balance sheet, making the total owed by state
taxpayers at $214 billion, or $45,000 per state taxpayer.
By comparison, the median household income for Illinois in 2013 was $56,210.
“I urge Governor Rauner and his administration to acknowledge the state’s true
debt and address this situation immediately before Illinois sinks further into
debt. Illinois already has the worst bond rating of all the states; our economy
cannot take another financial hit,” said Sheila Weinberg, founder and CEO of
TIA, in a media statement.
RELATED: Chicago startups could be exempt from Netflix ‘cloud tax’
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 Liberty Justice Center, a conservative legal group, filed a
lawsuit at the beginning of the month against the city of Chicago,
alleging the comptroller exceeded his authority by reinterpreting
the city’s 9 percent “amusement tax” to apply to streaming services
such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Hulu, and XBox Live.
The complaint notes the city has never taxed those services and
“the City Council has never authorized the Finance Department to
tax” them.
RELATED: Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago among cities to get extra U.S.
taxpayer funds
City residents already pay the highest wireless tax rate in the
country, which hurts the city’s poor minorities. And according to a
2014 estimate from a wireless industry affiliated-nonprofit,
MyWireless.org, Illinois residents pay the fifth-highest combined
federal and state wireless tax rate in the nation at 21.63 percent.
The city of Chicago reportedly hopes to make $12 million per year
from the “Netflix tax.”
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