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Sales Tax Rollback in Chicago?

1 min readBy: Joseph Bishop-Henchman

The Illinois Policy Institute has the latest on the issue:

By a vote of 12-3, the Cook County Board voted to roll back the sales taxA sales tax is levied on retail sales of goods and services and, ideally, should apply to all final consumption with few exemptions. Many governments exempt goods like groceries; base broadening, such as including groceries, could keep rates lower. A sales tax should exempt business-to-business transactions which, when taxed, cause tax pyramiding. by half of last year’s 1 percent increase. This means Chicago will soon no longer have the highest [major] sales taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. in the country as the total [rate] will dip from 10.25 percent to 9.75 percent.

Although Board President Todd Stroger has threatened to veto the rollback, it is likely the veto will be overridden if Forrest Claypool and Tony Peraica join the 12 other board members to get the 14 out of 17 votes needed to override the veto.

More here.

Pico Rivera and South Gate in California should be on notice! Those small communities with serious fiscal management problems saw their sales tax climb to 10.75% effective April 1. If Chicago lowers theirs, it’ll be quite a gap between them and the next highest rate.

More on Illinois (and Cook County sales tax) here.

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