New Chicago Mayor Plans $2B Taxpalooza On Businesses, Suburbs, Hotels, Commerce, Banks

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Johnson’s plan to freeze property taxes on Chicago homeowners and cancel the automatic escalator imposed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The escalator locks in annual property tax increases at the inflation rate. He does not, however, specify a rate for a city income tax.

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Homeowners in predominantly Hispanic wards are struggling to hang onto their homes after enduring increases in both assessments and property tax rates, with some bills up by more than 40%.

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Instead, he wants to “make the suburbs, airlines & ultra-rich pay their fair share” to generate “$800 million in new revenue.” “The suburban tax base utilizes Chicago’s infrastructure to earn their disproportionately higher income, yet their taxes fund already wealthy towns. A Metra “city surcharge” will raise $40 million from the suburbs,” his plan states, without saying precisely how the commuter tax would be imposed or at what level.

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Johnson’s plan also includes: • Reinstating the $4-a-month-per-employee “head tax” to generate $20 million, but confining the levy long-despised by Chicago’s business leaders to “large companies” that perform at least half their work in Chicago.

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Raising $98 million by “making the big airlines pay for polluting the air” in Chicago neighborhoods.

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Taxing financial transactions — Johnson calls it a “Big Banks Securities and Speculation Tax” — at a rate of $1 or $2 for every “securities trading contract.”

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Hiking a Chicago hotel tax that’s already the nation’s highest to generate $30 million more.

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Imposing “new user fees for high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers” to generate $100 million.

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raise the real estate transfer tax on high-end home sales to create a dedicated source of funding to reduce homelessness and create affordable housing. Johnson said what he calls a “Chicago Mansion Tax” would raise $100 million a year.

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“expanding” the city’s health care plan for public employees

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“The revenues and efficiencies in this plan add up to about $2 billion total to close Chicago’s current, $1 billion structural deficit and add another $1 billion in new investments from the Better Chicago Agenda,” Johnson’s plan states.

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United Working Families, a progressive group affiliated with the Chicago Teachers Union that has joined the CTU in endorsing Johnson, has long championed a $4.5 billion wish list of revenue-generating ideas it says would level the playing field between Chicago’s haves and have-nots. That group’s plan includes a 3.5% city income tax on Chicagoans and suburbanites earning more than $100,000 a year; a financial transaction tax; a 66% increase in the city’s hotel tax, which is already the highest in the country; a revived employee head tax; and raising the real estate transfer tax on high-end home sales.

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