As Illinois prepares for FY24, the State begins to wind up tax collections and spending for FY23. The current fiscal year will end on June 30, 2023. Revenue numbers compiled by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA) for May 2023, the next-to-last month of FY23, showed a largely flat revenue picture in the year-to-date. With personal income tax payments having taken a big hit in April 2023 from a reconciliation of end-of-year amounts owed, year-to-date personal income tax payments were down $1.1 billion for the first eleven months of FY23.
A net increase of $597 million in sales tax payments to the State, and an increase of $513 million in corporate income taxes, during the same period made up for this deficit but could not pay for significant new expenses imposed on Illinois by Gov. Pritzker and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly. A new expense item covered by a recently-enacted law, the provision of free medical care to undocumented immigrants, will have an estimated cost of $1.1 billion in FY24. This single budget line item is a sum equivalent to the entire increase in corporate income tax payments and sales tax payments to the State for all of FY23. As a result of trends like these, the Illinois State budget has fallen back into deficit and is no longer balanced as required by law.