On December 19, 2019 the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the City of Chicago’s ordinance imposing a tax on other tobacco products. The Supreme Court sided with the plaintiff that the City’s ordinance is preempted by the Illinois Municipal Code, which states home rule municipalities that have not imposed “a tax based on the number of units of cigarettes or tobacco products before July 1, 1993,…
Annually the Civic Federation releases a report on consumer taxes in the City of Chicago. Consumer taxes are tied to the use or consumption of certain goods and services that can be charged directly to consumers through retail transactions or passed onto consumers by businesses or governments. Consumer taxes in Chicago are imposed at various levels of government including by the City of Chicago,…
UPDATE: The Cook County Board passed ordinance 20-0658, imposing a 3% cannabis retailers’ occupation tax on recreational cannabis sales within the county. The new tax will go into effect July 1, 2020 and is in addition to state and local sales taxes and other cannabis taxes, as described below. The county projects it will receive $850,000 in revenue from the tax during the last six months of 2020…
Now that the Cook County Forest Preserve District’s $124.7 million budget has been approved without the help of a referendum to increase property tax revenue, Forest Preserve District Commissioners acknowledge that the District’s serious financial challenges need to be addressed over the next year. A proposal for a countywide referendum that would have asked voters on the March 2020 primary…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this analysis. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Civic Federation supports Mayor Lightfoot’s proposed FY2020 local funds budget of approximately $9.9 billion, but with several significant concerns. Entering FY2020 Mayor Lightfoot faced a historic $838.2 million Corporate Fund budget deficit driven largely by a $281.2 million…
2020 Civic Federation Legislative Priorities The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2020 include public employee pension reforms, consolidation of local government units in Illinois, enacting policies to rationalize the property tax system, creation of a Local Government Protection Authority, requiring the State of Illinois to…
The Civic Federation recently released its annual Effective Property Tax Rates report, which examines two- and ten-year trends in estimated effective tax rates for residential, commercial and industrial property in selected northeastern Illinois communities. The report highlights that in the ten-year period between tax years 2008 and 2017, the effective tax rates increased in all of the selected…
The Civic Federation recently released its annual Effective Property Tax Rates report, which examines two- and ten-year trends in estimated effective tax rates for residential, commercial and industrial property in selected northeastern Illinois communities. The report highlights that in the ten-year period between tax years 2008 and 2017, the effective tax rates increased in all of the selected…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this analysis. MAJOR FINDINGS Effective property tax rates are a measure of property tax burden for homeowners and businesses. They translate the tax rates on property tax bills into rates that reflect the percentage of full market value that a property owed in taxes for a given year. This report, produced annually…
The Civic Federation recently released its annual estimate of the full value of property in Cook County. The 2017 estimated value of all Cook County real estate was $585.6 billion. The 2017 estimates represent the fifth year in a row in which real estate values in Cook County increased after six straight years of decline. The 2017 total value estimate is an increase of $26.1 billion, or 4.7%,…
