First the question was whether Pat Quinn’s proposal was two percent or 67 percent.

When he, Mike Madigan and John Cullerton upped the stakes to 75%, most newspaper folk got the picture. Even they pay taxes and have a personal interest.

Now that the law has been signed lickety-split newspaper people can’t agree on whether it is a 66 percent or a 67 percent increase.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the huge tax hike amounts to 66%.

The Chicago Sun-Times, which managed to keep the income tax hike off its front page (appropriate, I guess, since it has favored all income tax increases), says it’s a 66 percent increase.

66% is shown on the newspaper of this cartoon in the State Journal-Register. The cat in question is not Keely Cat, who remains quite laid back. He knows that the reduction in the Sociai Security tax rate of 2 percentage points will offset the 2 percentage point inccrease in the individual income tax rate in Illinois.

So does the cartoonist at the State Journal-Register in Springfield.

Only the Chicago Tribune has it right.

The Chicago Tribune says the income tax rate is increasing 67%.

Keely Cat doesn't seem as perturbed as the one in the cartoon. Perhaps it is just that, as with many of the younger generation, he doesn't read newspapers.

67 percent is the increase it headlines on the Chicago Tribune’s front page in the article that tells people how to figure how much more Democrats are forcing them to pay in state income taxes.

The Northwest Herald reports that the increase is 66 percent.  Perhaps the figure was taken from this Associated Press story.

I don’t know what you learned about the rounding of fractions to a whole number, but I was taught that if the fraction was more than half to round up.

Three out of four news sources I read today rounded down.

How would convert 66 2/3 into a whole number?