At a Monday morning news conference, The Republican superminority in the Illinois Senate proposed a bundle of bills to attract and retain business.
“We are giving voice to the business community,” said Senate Republican Leader John Curran of Downers Grove. “This is what we're hearing from the business community, what their needs are, what could really help small and large businesses like prosper and really do better in Illinois.”
Curran said he would like to see removal of a $100,000 cap on net operating loss deductions set in 2021, claiming record state revenue makes the cap unnecessary.
Republican Sen. Win Stoller of Germantown Hills filed Senate Bill 14 that would eliminate the state’s franchise tax. Stoller said the tax has three parts: a fee when you start a business, an annual renewal fee and a fee when a business receives new capital infusions.
“Franchise tax is a deeply flawed approach to taxing businesses. It has a high compliance burden,” he said. “It actually incentivizes the use of debt over equity, and it penalizes businesses that are locating or expanding in Illinois.”
Sen. Andrew Chesney, R-Freeport, spoke on two different bills. The first, Senate Bill 2140, would reduce the LLC fees paid by businesses to the state. The second, Senate Bill 140, would eliminate the estate tax that Chesney called a “barrier to entry or re-entry into our state.”
“What we're seeing is that a lot of our businesses and our families are simply leaving the state,” said Chesney. “And for those businesses that are not able to pick up and leave the state, they are having to pay a pretty high pretty high tax just to transact in the state of Illinois.”
Chesney said many of the measures proposed fight a trend of population decline in Illinois, which the Census shows lost around 104,000 people last year.This is the ninth straight year of decline in Illinois’ population.
Stoller also believes the measures attracting business would mean population growth, using the Volkswagen factory manufacturing electric vehicles in Chattanooga, Tennessee as an example.
"Chattanooga used to be the same size as my hometown of Peoria. Now it's double the size,” Stoller said. “And Tennessee is a state that has no income tax. It has a property tax of approximately a third of that in Illinois. And we need to start sending signals that Illinois is open for business.”
The news conference also included proposals from Sen. Seth Lewis of Bartlett and Sen. Don DeWitte of St. Charles. Lewis and DeWitte proposed tax credits for Illinois “legacy” businesses with a track record of employing and remaining in the state, as well as additional incentives for research and development at manufacturing companies.
