I believe there are more taxes coming with Obama care. 3.9% if you make 200,000. -250,000 to pay for health care, Also heard more taxes once they figure out what's in Obama care ha. I believe we should pay as high as California 63% or more for high income earners because Californians are the smartest people on earth according to our polititians!!

Another brilliant Patch Rticle. How do you vote in the poll?

There is a huge underground economy that gets bigger everytime a new tax scheme is put in place. There are almost as many people who work for cash, buy materials (often illicit) with cash, pay employees in cash, etc., as there are legitimate employees. Ever since the non smoking policies in bars went into effect, there are now hundreds of "private clubs" where you can drink, smoke, gamble that operate with no license, pay no taxes and the employees are paid in cash eliminating workmans comp, payroll taxes, etc. These over taxing, over reaching, over regulating clowns in government have created a bathtub gin/bootleg/speakeasy industry that makes Al Capones prohibition era look like a church bingo operation. That leaves fewer and fewer Sheeple left to pick up the tab on all these misguided social experiments.

Too high? The government knows how to spend my money much better than I do. /sarcasm Huge pensions to public workers while my Social Security is likely to get smaller and smaller before I retire. Bail out the political donating banks, but let the mortgage payers suffer. Stimulate the higher paid union jobs instead of helping 2 to 3 times as many low income workers.

The question should be which taxes are too high. When 25% of the federal taxes from Illinois subsidize low cost of living states, one has to wonder how much better Illinois would be if the $700 billion that the feds took from Illinois and spent in other states over the last 20 years was put to work here. It would be more than enough to pay off the $100 billion pension debt. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union

The easiest way to help Illinois would be to shrink the federal government. Shrinking state government would be next on my list. New Trier Township governments have been much more responsible than the federal or state governments.

Unchecked rises in property taxes pushes people from their homes! Private Property is a myth -- we merely 'rent' our homes. Try not paying your property tax bill and see how long it takes to be tossed to the curb of your castle!
Illinois politicians AT ALL LEVELS (including school district boards) lack fiscal constraint and eye taxpayer money as their private piggybanks to cater to self-interests and cronies.

I want to pay my fair share based on what is absolutely required by budget.

Let's see if we get an actual budget passed during Obama's second term.

Let's see if the legacy media has the.. audacity to ask the president about it.

Let's talk about AH. My property value has gone down 42% because of the high number of foreclosures and short sales within a "1 mile radius", but my property taxes just went up 12%! Apparently the village wants to simply have MORE of its residents lose their homes due to outrageous taxes! Perhaps that's why so many of the businesses in AH have left us and moved to neighboring villages.....

We are getting taxed more and more and getting less and less. You will not have a robust economy where 50% pay no income taxes. Close to 50 million people are now on food stamps. We are developing an underclass that demands to be supported by others, pretty soon there will be no one to pull this wagon. How to solve this dilemma, remove all socialist policies and allow the free market to grow.

If you think your taxes are high now, just wait. We have yet to see the top. Don't believe what the government tells you. They simply lie to maintain their ability to tax you further tomorrow.

Property taxes are no more than LOT RENT!! You can own you're home, free of any mortgage for decades, but miss a couple years of lot rent and they will STEAL you're $250,000 home for $12,000 owed in lot rent, with NO portion of the remaining equity due to the home"owner". I just can't imaging OUR representatives sitting around debating this law...how could ANYONE in good conscience think this is a good and fair practice??

Taxes are rigged against the middle class and the latest vote "to protect the middle class" ended a program where our withholding was dropped to 4.2% and now has risen back to 6.2%. The middle class gets pounded when their property values decline yet property tax formulas are rigged to not reflect that decline. The middle class gets pounded every time sales taxes go up or taxes on gasoline. State subsidized services like the RTA, Tollway, METRA and CTA dramatically raised rates.

The Federal Government, thanks to Democrats and the White House, has operated WITHOUT a budget for 4 years and borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends. The State of Illinois, 100% controlled by Democrats, now has the lowest credit rating of all states in the nation, while we have more units of tax eating governments than any other state in the nation.

But some liberal goo-goos out there are trying to tell us our taxes aren't high enough and have declined in the past 20 or so years. Just add up all the taxes you pay across the board, and that argument will look even sillier than it is now.

Thus, the plight of the middle class. The ruling political party pays it lip service, while constantly reaching into middle class pockets.

The problem is, higher taxes are "sold" to the people as targeting the "rich", but there are honestly not enough "rich" people out there to pay for all the free stuff. Plus, rich people can leave (Tina Turner is no longer obligated to US taxes, though she has lived overseas for many years).

There is too much waste in the programs we have - my wife was at Aldi the other day and a woman was telling her and my son that we should get a LINK card as it gives you FREE food and you can sell what you don't need for 50c on the dollar. Also, you see too many LINK card users having fancy nails/hair and talking on smart phones.

In his inauguration speech last week, Obama mentioned that we have to do more to combat globa....climate change.

Forget about the fact that there has been no warming trend in the last 15 years...the liberal scientists and the 'green' business associates of the left have to eat, right?

What does this mean to us? Higher taxes.

Obama can't save the livelihood of these people by himself...he needs all of us to pitch in with our "fair share".

(from chapter 6 of 'how to redistribute American wealth')

Are my taxes too high? Duh yeah. Genius poll question. Let's count all the "I don't think my taxes are high enough" responses.

WW & JS, What a couple of DB's....Just Sayin

I think "Bob" who needs proof of the underground economy should get out in public more often instead of taking his trust fund administrators word for it. "Smoking is illegal in private clubs in Illinois." So are handguns and there are seven dead people from last night, five the night before. What a mope. You know he voted for Obozo.

Obama has given new meaning to TAX and SPEND Democrat!

7 trillion added to the debt and counting.......17T is going to be some huge interest payments coming when rates raise. Then what?

70% increase in IL taxes and the state has worst balance sheet is in the nation.

Carry on....

Yep, and the "Mighty Quinn" is worried about things like signing a law to give illegals...er excuse me "undocumented" immigrants drivers licenses.

Carry on indeed....

A few comments have been deleted because they included swear words. Please keep the language clean, folks. Thanks.

Hello. 80% in this poll said their taxes are too high. In the last few weeks we've been witness to a community divide over increasing property taxes to fund education, particularly salary increases. Review Grayslake elementary strike comments and you will find those who said they have to and are willing to pay more in taxes to help fund the school district and pay for good teachers.
I sincerely ask how that lines with the 80% here who say they pay too much?
I don't mean to instigate argument. I continue to be befuddled by many who posted that the school board was wrong for not increasing the property taxes.
For me the answer is simple, I am a retired man living on a fixed income. Increasing anything directly affects my ability to maintain a life in the home my wife and I have lived for decades. I do not want to nor can I pay more.

Pete

All of our taxes are way to high. I know mine are. There shouldn't be any taxes at all.

America has become a country of ignorant, uneducated, liars.Polititions know this. (Lying being their favorite too)l. When people vote for Hollywood's political views, now we know why are Country is collasping. Does Clooney pay taxes here or in Lake Como, Italy ??

Wow, it's unbelievable how statistics can be skewed and misrepresented. So, you are saying taxes are lower burden now than 30 years ago? What was the cost of living 30 years ago? The consumer price index from 30 years ago is 112%! With any tax increase, even a mere 2%, could very well make a big dent in quality of living. Property taxes alone are extremely high. Cook County needs to be completely overhauled. This article is a joke.

Also using the liberal based media as their platform to promote their poisonous politics. It really is a shame that most of our society uses the media as their tool of education; which fully explains why our country is in the mess that its in.

As a CPA, I have to keep up wlith this madness year around, while most of you will cool off and get back to real life within a few weeks. DON'T! Stay with it, bug your elected reps, if they are not respnsive, find someone who is responsive. Also pour over those "boring" reports because they are the tools to effect change.

Illinois has more townships than most other States. Townships are an example of another layer of Government requiring our tax dollars. Multiple school districts in small Villages, library and park districts, fire districts etc. Besides some added overhead, we have one district being flush with cash and building parks while the other is asking for funds to remodel outdated schools. So we get another tax increase instead of having the opportunity to prioritize and consider that A/C in schools is more important than a new ball field. Instead we get both and one involves a tax increase when if prioritized the money was there all along, just in the wrong bucket. Fewer taxing bodies would result in lower local taxes.

Schools are the culprit in my opinion. Fremd High School, D211 average salary $99,000 for teachers, $134,000 for admins. Oh, and lets not forget about the synthetic turf for the football field, how much did that cost?

http://www.d211.org/pdf/reportcards/fhs_report_card.pdf

I could care less about where the money came from, it's bad spending...period.

Bucephalic, you completely missed my point. I don't care where the money came from, but I DO care on how schools spend their (mostly our) money. Given 4 million dollars for turf is not money well spent. Why not lower the cost burden on our tax payers instead? Everything 'educational' is over-inflated. It's so much easier to spend free money. It's wrong here, it's wrong with our government, it needs to stop.

Buceph, true, but on the other hand a natural turf field is more ecologically sound and money could be earned by renting it out for pasture. This would provide more locally grown food and make the soccer games much more interesting to watch as the kids dogdge the livestock and their droppings..