Opposition to the GRT

Remember my post about the black religious leadership being on board for the Gross Reciepts Tax (GRT or I can use an alternate title Tax Fairness Plan). This is designed for funding schools and to get a health care program off the ground. There's a lot of bellyaching on this and I'm going to highlight more.

On Tuesday, things seemed a little slow over at Illinoize so I posted about a black business organization's opposition to the GRT. In fact Hermene Hartman, publisher of N'Digo has been very much against the GRT and said so in her column and proposed alternate proposals. So there are other opposition to the GRT.

In a column today Michael Snead reports that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. opposed the Governor's GRT proposal for the same basic reason, it will hurt small businesses.

On top of that three Democratic state senators have problems with the GRT proposal...

Sens. William Delgado, Martin Sandoval and Antonio Munoz put out a statement saying they want to debate other possibilities.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich has proposed a "gross receipts" tax that would apply to nearly all Illinois business transactions. He says business should pay a bigger share of Illinois taxes, and he wants to use the money for education and health care.

The three senators applaud his goals but question the tax proposal. "We believe the governor's insistence on the gross receipts tax as the exclusive solution to this problem is short-sighted," the Chicago Democrats said.

They suggested a plan to raise income and sales taxes while lowering local property taxes. They called that idea "more realistic."

Well the Capitol Fax Blog is a little more balanced on this than mine only because I am tracking the opposition only. Well hopefully this will be an interesting debate. We'll see how it goes.