The tens of millions of dollars spent by billionaire Ken Griffin to defeat Illinois’s graduated income tax proposal appears to have been money well spent, according to a new study by ProPublica.
It looked at the estimated tax savings for ten wealthy investors who donated tens of thousands of dollars to the effort to defeat that constitutional amendment. Chief among them was Griffin, who spent nearly $54 million to fight the proposal. ProPublica estimates that Griffin recouped that investment in about a year, with an estimated tax savings of $51 million annually from not seeing higher tax rates imposed on the very wealthy.
The investment also paid off for businessman Richard Uihlein, who donated $100,000 but will save an estimated $15 million a year in taxes.
