Update: Collection of the City of Chicago’s tax on other tobacco products has been moved from a starting date of March 1, 2019 to no sooner than April 1, 2019 or 60 days following the plaintiff’s deadline to file an appeal, according to the City of Chicago’s Office of Budget and Management. Chicago businesses selling smokeless tobacco products are currently being notified about the tax and the remittance process. Content originally posted January 4, 2019 Annually the Civic Federation…
As part of the FY2016 budget approval process during fall of 2015, the City of Chicago for the first time imposed a waste removal fee of $9.50 per month on approximately 600,000 residents already receiving waste removal services provided by City of Chicago employees. Chicago residences receiving City-provided garbage collection include single family homes and multi-unit buildings with four or fewer units. Chicago residents who live in properties with five or more units, as well as owners of…
2019 Civic Federation Legislative Priorities The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2019 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 build a rainy day fund, development and implementation of a capital improvement plan and improved…
Click here to read the full report. The Civic Federation supports the City of Chicago’s proposed $8.9 billion FY2019 budget because it is a reasonable one-year financial plan that does not include any new taxes or fees, makes important public safety investments and funds the increased 2019 pension contribution of $32 million to the police and fire pension funds without a property tax increase. As outlined in the report, the FY2019 budget recommendation continues to propose reforms and…
Consumers of liquid nicotine in the City of Chicago will now pay more for liquid nicotine following the passage of Ordinance 2018-7371. Liquid nicotine products are used in e-cigarettes, also referred to as vaping. On September 20, 2018 Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced Ordinance 2018-7371 to the City Council Finance Committee where it was passed by the Committee and within hours sent to and approved by the City Council. The ordinance increases the City of Chicago tax on liquid nicotine to…
With governments in Illinois facing steep increases in yearly pension contributions, new plans are being floated to borrow billions of dollars to stabilize ailing pension funds and relieve budgetary pressures. The City of Chicago is considering issuing $10 billion in pension obligation bonds (POBs) to shore up its retirement systems. As part of a plan by the non-profit Center for Tax and Budget Accountability to stretch out and flatten the State’s required pension contributions, the State of…
The City of Chicago released its 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) earlier this summer. This blog will examine the City’s Corporate Fund (i.e. General Fund) fund balance as a percent of general operating expenditures based on audited data from the City’s most recent CAFR. This ratio serves as a measure of whether a government is maintaining adequate levels of fund balance to mitigate current and future risks and ensure stable tax rates.[1] The City considers its budget…
The Chicago City Council on July 25, 2018 approved a 2.0% surcharge on shared housing and vacation rentals in the City of Chicago. The 2.0% surcharge is in addition to an existing 4.0% surcharge on vacation rentals or shared housing units, bringing the total taxes specific to home sharing to 6.0%. The home sharing rates are applied on top of the City of Chicago’s composite hotel tax, which is 17.4%. This means that home sharing will now be charged a total tax rate of approximately 23.4%. The…
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner presented his FY2019 State budget proposal in February for the State fiscal year beginning on July 1, 2018. As discussed in an earlier blog post, the proposal included measures that would have affected local governments including municipalities, counties and transit agencies. The State of Illinois FY2019 enacted budget was passed by the Illinois General Assembly on May 31 and signed by Governor Rauner on June 4. This blog post provides an update on two of the…
The Illinois Department of Revenue announced last week that the final equalization factor for the Cook County 2017 property assessment year (taxes payable in 2018) is 2.9627. The 2017 final equalization factor of 2.9627 is greater than the final 2016 equalization factor of 2.8032. This does not mean that individual property tax bills will go up or down. It means that, overall, the weighted average level of assessment in Cook County for all types of property averaged over the past three years…
