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Comment by paloaltokid | Hacker News Reader

Have you never been to Chicago? Pretty nice town.

Yes, and Cook County has a property tax rate that is nearly 2x San Francisco county.

But income taxes are lower. A $200k income has an effective state tax rate of 7.67% in California and 4.95% in Illinois (IL has a flat tax rate).

And considering real estate is much cheaper in Chicago, a home that's half as much would offer the same standard of living, when compared to SF.

So you could pay the same amount in property taxes, and less income tax.

IL tax rates will have to go to pay for all of the debt for their defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare.

CA also has that problem, but not to the degree IL has. IL has fewer high income earners to spread the pain around, and higher debt amounts overall.

It’s part of the reason why land is so much cheaper in IL.

Illinois voters defeated an initiative to implement graduated income tax in the November 2020 election:

https://ballotpedia.org/Illinois_Allow_for_Graduated_Income_...

Agreed the state has financial issues, but it remains unclear if the upper middle class will bear the responsibility.

Anyone that has money and lack of political power. Middle class is a vague term, but currently, a flat % income tax takes evenly from rich and poor, so it benefits the rich.

What will happen now is that IL will increase then 5% income tax to 6% or whatever they have to go meet their needs, and so it will continue to benefit the rich.

Until it gets to a point where the lower income people realize they can make the rich pay more, and vote for marginal income tax rates. That’s when the screws will start getting turned on higher income people.

Once that happens, I would assume anyone with disposable income will have their incomes taxes go up. It only failed 47 to 53 this year, so I imagine it will be soon, but I predict the marginal income tax rates will ratchet up even at a “middle” class household income of $80k+.

And then as more rich people leave, the more the marginal income tax brackets have to be expanded and/or percentages increased.

In any case, there’s no relief until sufficient benefit recipients die, and that stupid COLA is no longer in effect. That is one of the most egregious examples of corruption I have seen. Anyone with high school math can see a 3% annual COLA increase would destroy you unless you had the power to print money.

I’m really curious what this map looks like for last decade instead of just 2017:

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iPUtINXvmFd...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-05/even-befo...

Only the extremely wealthy would leave. An average person does not move their state of residence just to save $1,000 on state taxes. That could be disruptive: leaving family and friends, your job, etc. All to save a grand.

It’s more like $10k to $20k (and ever increasing) per year for dual income professional households compared to a no income tax state like Washington. Over a career of 20 to 30 years, that adds up to a substantial amount of savings.

Basically, the families earning $100k+ would be saving 5%+ of state income tax and at least $5k+ in extra property taxes compared to a non debt burdened state and tolls and all the various other taxes that need to be collected to pay for the compounded debt of pensions and whatnot.

Because they are tired of tax increases. It's time to cut pensions.

But from a quick google search result [0], price per square foot is 4 time as expensive in SF versus chicago.

[0]: https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2020/07/07...

Which is a good thing. Higher property taxes leads to lower, more realistic real estate prices for new buyers. See Prop 13.

The issue with Chicagoland isn't the property taxes currently, it's the uncertainty on the guaranteed raises that will occur. Sure, you can buy a $650,000 house in the city and pay $13k/yr in property tax, but that might go up to $20k/yr at which point you're underwater on your mortgage and spending an extra $800/mo.

I have the money to buy and the day the city files for bankruptcy and restructures their pensions is the day I purchase. But not a second sooner.

It’s only a good thing if higher property taxes lead to investments in government services and infrastructure.

It’s a bad thing if higher property taxes go towards paying down disproportionate levels of debt.

It's nice from May to October.

I almost died when I visited in February.

You're not living unless the winter weather almost kills you when you're walking the dog!

Nice to visit, wouldn't want to live there.

Did I mention it's the murder capital of the United States?

Meh. Yes, sure, by statistics. But those rates come from neighborhoods that most likely don't have a lot of six-figure salary tech workers in them.

It is the country's third largest city. So by volume it may well be the murder capital. But the murder rate places it like 10th, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

It has a lot of murders but the QoL crimes seem to be significantly less severe than they are in San Francisco.

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