In 2024, former Gov. Pat Quinn found himself with a case of déjà vu.
He was campaigning across Illinois, urging voters to approve a ballot referendum recommending a 3% surcharge on incomes above $1 million.
It was all so familiar to Quinn, and with good reason: He’d championed an advisory referendum for the exact same proposal a decade earlier. And though it was supported by voters back then, the Legislature did nothing.
Now, Quinn is back at square one.
Just like 10 years ago, Illinois voters in November supported a referendum recommending that millionaires pay a 3% income tax surcharge. Both referendums garnered similar support — over 60%. Now, supporters hope the second time’s the charm and the General Assembly will act.
“Point them to the election returns,” Quinn said about his argument to legislators, who will again determine the proposal’s future. “We’ve had two referendums, separated by a decade, clearly indicating what the voters want.”
Despite support at the polls, turning the nonbinding referendum into law isn’t easy. State lawmakers would have to turn it into a constitutional amendment, sending it back to the voters as a binding ballot measure.
A vote on amending the Illinois Constitution, similar to the fight in 2020 over the graduated income tax amendment, would likely attract more interest than an advisory referendum. A high-profile campaign could yield a result that contradicts those of the referendums.
Still, supporters are working to get Springfield to take action and put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2026.
The failed 2014 effort
Quinn said he proposed the 3% surcharge on millionaires to help Illinois boost education spending while also allowing schools to rely less on local property taxes for funding.
After the advisory referendum passed in 2014 with nearly 64% support, then-House Speaker Mike Madigan’s efforts to turn the proposal into a constitutional amendment in 2015 and 2016 failed due to insufficient support from his own Democratic caucus.
Then, Democrats lost their House supermajority — when one party controls at least three-fifths of a legislative chamber, which also is the threshold to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot — in 2016, dooming its future.
In 2018, Gov. JB Pritzker won the governor’s mansion and Democrats returned with supermajorities in both legislative chambers. But Pritzker campaigned on a different tax proposal: moving the state from a flat tax to a graduated one, where the rate progressively increases as income rises. That tax proposal got on the 2020 ballot.
The campaign for the graduated income tax constitutional amendment generated more than $100 million in spending, roughly coming equally from supporters and opponents. Billionaires Pritzker (in support) and Kenneth Griffin (in opposition) alone shouldered a majority of that spending.
Voters rejected it by 6 percentage points.
State Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, said part of the issue with the campaign and amendment itself was it didn’t explain what the state would do with the additional revenue resulting from the changes in the tax code.
“The messaging wasn’t clear as to what it could be used for,” he said. “I think that there was some incorrect information that was being put out by the opponents that said low- to middle-class individuals would also pay more.”
At an event outside City Hall in 2022, Pilsen residents involved in community organizations protested what they said was a sharp hike in their Cook County property tax bills. In 2024, the advisory referendum on the millionaire’s tax was billed to deliver property tax relief.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file
What could happen this time
Hoffman led the push in the House to put the tax policy back on the ballot in 2024, again as an advisory referendum, but this time with the explicit goal of using the extra revenue to alleviate high property taxes.
“What I was attempting to gauge is, with the failure of the graduated income tax, was there still an appetite to provide for a surcharge?” he said.
Ann Lousin, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said advisory referendums often don’t translate into actual statutes or amendments. That’s partially because while they’re nonbinding, they’re also often vague. When the referendums are tied to policies, she said they can be helpful.
“It does give the legislators a chance to see who among the voters has a strong view about a specific issue,” she said.
With the latest advisory referendum backed by 61% of voters, the ball is again in lawmakers’ court. The surcharge would violate the flat-tax portion of the Illinois Constitution, which is why voters would have to be asked to amend it.
Since Republicans have opposed the surcharge proposal, Democrats can lose only seven votes in the House and four in the Senate to get the tax amendment on the ballot.
Supporters have their work cut out for them as the vote to put the advisory referendum on the ballot was short of the 71 and 36 votes required in the House and Senate, respectively, for a constitutional amendment.
Lawmakers would also have to hash out the amendment’s language.
Quinn and Hoffman said it needs to be as specific as possible to avoid opponents misrepresenting it, a lesson learned from the 2020 graduated income tax amendment. Quinn also said it should specify it only applies to individuals and be clear how the property tax relief would work.
Hoffman said he’s already had conversations about the policy’s next steps in Springfield.
“After seeing the [election] results, there’s certainly a feeling that we should look,” he said. But he added, there’s no consensus yet.
State Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, who sponsored ballot referendum legislation in the Senate, reflected this uncertainty in a statement to the Sun-Times: “Voters provided an important data point as we seek to reduce the crushing property tax burden, something I have long supported.”
It’s unclear where the governor stands. Pritzker’s office declined to comment for this story, instead pointing to his remarks at a September news conference, when he reiterated his belief that the flat-tax system is unfair but offered no thoughts on the surcharge.
Opposition’s plans
While the surcharge passed both times with little debate or campaigning, the 2020 graduated income tax fight shows that would likely change if it becomes a proposed constitutional amendment.
The Illinois Department of Revenue estimates the tax surcharge would generate $4.5 billion. But critics argue lawmakers can’t guarantee all that money will go to property tax relief.
Bryce Hill, director of fiscal research at the Illinois Policy Institute, said that guarantee can’t be made until the state’s budget shortfall, a projected $3 billion in 2026, is closed.
Meanwhile, Lou Sandoval, president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, said the surcharge would hurt the people it’s supposed to support.
He said it would drive high-income earners to leave an already business-unfriendly state, leading low- and middle-income people’s property taxes to increase. Explaining that to voters is why he thinks this measure could still be defeated at the polls.
“With proper messaging, the average taxpayer would understand that just simplistically, ‘I’m actually hurting myself by saying tax the rich,’” Sandoval said. “If you look at the effectiveness of previous campaigns on this, that’s what they did. It broke down what it really meant for the average person.”
But Quinn said the fact that voters have approved this policy twice shows there is durable support. It leads him to think no matter the opposition’s campaign, with strong organizing the policy would win.
“The powers that have a lot of money may try to stop it,” he said. “We the people, consumers and taxpayers, banding together, can overcome their opposition and win the day.”