There are many rumblings on the street that the City Council is about to propose a new referendum providing that the transfer tax paid by Buyers upon the sale of real estate with a value over one million dollars (some reports indicate the tax would kick in on properties costing $750,000 or more) will increase to $9.75 per $500 in order to fund a program for affordable housing.  Such a transfer tax must be put on the ballot in a referendum.  The proposed tax would increase the current tax rate of $3.75 per $500 of sale price by about 160%.Unfortunately, this proposal seems to be a perfect case of “use someone else’s money for that”.  When you ask the mass populace if they want to tax a very small percentage of the populace who is NOT THEM, their answer will invariably be “yes”.  That’s a short-sighted view.  If Chicago and Illinois keep taxing the wealthiest of the populace, they will flee the state (see Illinois for an example of states people are currently fleeing) and that will leave the state with even bigger mess.  Throw in the fact that an already slow “high end” real estate market will be brought to a screaming halt and you might find that there are some major unintended consequences that come along with this proposal.