Should Illinois Follow South Dakota? How Other States Tax Lawyers, Other Professional Services
From Crain's Chicago Business
To lawmakers looking for revenue, lawyers and other highly paid professionals can be pretty attractive.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has floated the idea of expanding the state's tax on services to include lawyers and others, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel argued during his re-election campaign that Springfield should extend the state sales tax to “dozens of professional services.”
Only five states tax professional services, as part of either a wider gross receipts or business and occupation tax. South Dakota, New Mexico and Hawaii tax gross receipts at rates of 4 or 5 percent, with local jurisdictions adding another 2 or 3 percent. Delaware taxes gross receipts that clear certain income thresholds at less than 1 percent, and Washington levies a 1.5 percent business and occupation tax.
Four of the states collected a total of $704 million from professional services in the most recent year for which data was available (either 2013 or 2014). Hawaii does not track revenue by industry.
But Illinois has a far larger professional services industry, raising questions about whether the other states are good guides to how much revenue such a tax might raise here, how it would be administered and whether it could be passed at all, given certain opposition from well-organized professional associations.
A proposal Rauner's campaign released last summer said taxing Illinois lawyers would raise $167 million, but it did not advocate taxing accountants, architects or engineers.
Read more in our daily News Update...
From Crain's Chicago Business
To lawmakers looking for revenue, lawyers and other highly paid professionals can be pretty attractive.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has floated the idea of expanding the state's tax on services to include lawyers and others, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel argued during his re-election campaign that Springfield should extend the state sales tax to “dozens of professional services.”
Only five states tax professional services, as part of either a wider gross receipts or business and occupation tax. South Dakota, New Mexico and Hawaii tax gross receipts at rates of 4 or 5 percent, with local jurisdictions adding another 2 or 3 percent. Delaware taxes gross receipts that clear certain income thresholds at less than 1 percent, and Washington levies a 1.5 percent business and occupation tax.
Four of the states collected a total of $704 million from professional services in the most recent year for which data was available (either 2013 or 2014). Hawaii does not track revenue by industry.
But Illinois has a far larger professional services industry, raising questions about whether the other states are good guides to how much revenue such a tax might raise here, how it would be administered and whether it could be passed at all, given certain opposition from well-organized professional associations.
A proposal Rauner's campaign released last summer said taxing Illinois lawyers would raise $167 million, but it did not advocate taxing accountants, architects or engineers.
Read more in our daily News Update...