Pritzker pushes social media tax in State of the State Address

Illinois’ governor delivers his state of the state and budget address, taking specific aim at social media companies with a new tax.

Governor JB Pritzker delivered his annual budget address Thursday afternoon. He submitted a budget proposal that would increase spending slightly, a proposal to make it easier to build new housing, ideas to tackle energy supply and demand to ease higher prices like blocking new tax credits given to data centers for two years. Pritzker proposes a new tax on social media companies, saying it could generate $200 million in revenue, and hopes that would help offset the money being cut off by the federal government.

How effective can this be? Is it enough?

Host Jim Niedelman got into that issue with former Rock Island County Republican party chair Bill Bloom and Democratic political consultant Dave Heller.

“It’s going to raise a lot of money for them, but in the end it’s going to get passed on to the consumers,” Bloom said. “The fact is Illinois has $56 billion in spending. There’s not one line item that any kind of a spending cut in the budget. It’s yet another tax on the people.”

“All of the money that’s raised by the social media tax goes to fund education in the state of Illinois,” Heller said. “Improving the quality of Illinois schools, K-12 education, is a top priority of Pritzker’s, and it’s a smart priority. That’s what we ought to be doing.”

To hear more, click on the video above.

Question of the Week

That brings us to our question of the week: What do you think about Illinois governor JB Pritzker’s plan to tax social media companies to generate new revenue? Please share your thoughts at 4therecord@whbf.com. or respond to this post on Facebook here or here.

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