Governor touts tax plan

Blagojevich brings bus tour to Galesburg, Avon

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

By JOHN R. PULLIAM

The Register-Mail

GALESBURG - Gov. Rod Blagojevich's "Investing in Families" bus tour made a stop Tuesday at R Cubed Technologies, located in the basement of the Bondi Building.

The governor visited Galesburg on the second day of his planned four-day tour to tout his gross receipts tax proposal he wants to use to make health insurance available to every resident of Illinois, as well as to provide additional money for schools. Later in the day, Blagojevich stopped at the Buchen family farm near Avon.

With his wife and two children at his side, Blagojevich said, "We can afford to provide health care coverage for every family in the state."

Acknowledging state Rep. Don Moffitt, R-Gilson, Blagojevich said lawmakers in Illinois have a very good health plan.

"If every citizen in Illinois had the same type of health coverage Don and I have, then we would have no issues," Blagojevich said.

The governor said if the health-care crisis is going to be solved, it will be at the state level.

"Some of the best changes start at the state level," he said.

A news release called the tax structure in Illinois "one of the most regressive and unfair to working families in the nation."

According to the Illinois Department of Revenue, 37 of the 99 "Fortune 100" companies that filed taxes in Illinois paid no state income taxes in 2004, despite averaging $1.2 billion in sales. Blagojevich also made a point of noting, on average, 48 percent of corporations that generated $50 million or more in annual sales in Illinois from 1997 through 2004 paid no income taxes.

"This is at a time when the average salary of a CEO is 400 times that of an average worker," Blagojevich said.

The governor last week made some changes in his "Tax Fairness Plan."

When the Galesburg Area Chamber of Commerce had a forum March 26 to allow business owners to express their feelings about the plan, the governor was proposing that companies with gross receipts of less than $1 million be exempt from the GRT. The revised proposal makes companies with gross receipts of less than $2 million annually exempt. Blagojevich said that means 85 percent of all businesses in the state will be exempt.

The governor earlier proposed that manufacturing, retail and wholesale firms would pay at a rate of 0.5 percent, while all other businesses required to pay the tax would use a rate of 1.8 percent. Almost all of the more than 50 people who attended the March 26 forum opposed to the plan.

The respective rates have now been increased to .85 percent and 1.95 percent. Exports will not be taxed and items such as food and prescription medicine will not be taxed.

Blagojevich said large corporations in the Chicago area want to increase state income taxes by 66 percent.

"How can you possibly ask a working person making $50,000 a year to pay another $1,000?" the governor asked.

Blagojevich also said his "Helping Kids Learn" proposal will boost state funding for schools by $1.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2008. General state aid to schools would increase by more than $800 million, raising the foundation level by $724, to $6,058 per pupil.

Asked after his presentation about the opposition expressed by the Galesburg Area Chamber of Commerce and many business leaders, Blagojevich said, "First of all, there's a lot of misinformation out there."

He said his proposal means big corporations will pay their fair share "for a change."

Moffitt said he mentioned some concerns he has heard while riding to the event with the governor.

"I still have a lot of questions that have to be answered," Moffitt said after the governor's presentation. "If it would run business out of the state, then obviously, I could not support it. I want to make it clear I need to gather a lot of information and generally would not be in favor of additional taxes on business."