I'm wondering how the Governor's tax increase and nanny-state boondoggle is going. At my personal blog I have a post entitled The Grotesquely Revolting Tale of the Gross Receipts Tax.
As an anonymous commenter there says: "An out of state firm that sells to an Illinois firm will have to pay the gross receipts tax on that sale. The gross receipts tax will apply to ALL SALES MADE TO ILLINOIS BUSINESSES, and it matters not whether the firm making the sale is located in Illinois or out of state."
I think that may run afoul of the "substantial nexus" requirement for a State to tax commerce with another State, but I'm not a lawyer.
In researching the post, I talked to my local IGA store manager, and asked him how much business they do in a year. He thought a bit, and said about $2 million, give or take. This is in a town of 1600 people, in which a lot of people shop at the larger grocery and super-Wal-Mart stores 15 miles away. If they're taking a 10% profit on that, I don't know where it goes.
A Crain's Chicago Business article said:
Gov. Blagojevich's proposal — the gross-receipts tax — has been tried elsewhere. Ohio and Texas recently adopted such a tax, but only as part of a broader restructuring in which other, more onerous taxes were eliminated. Michigan just junked its gross-receipts tax after gripes that it put its firms at a competitive disadvantage.
Michigan, by most measures, has one of the worst economies in the nation, but GoRoBlogo wants to follow their model.
Genius. Sheer unmitigated genius.
On the other hand, this may all be a ploy to get us to accept his real plan, a whumping big income tax increase or a straight State sales tax.
Is the Goroblogo that crafty? Probably. He's managed to let Eppley and Jones take the Chief heat.
