{"id":103786,"date":"2025-07-30T03:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T03:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/103786\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T03:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T03:41:08","slug":"johnson-floats-corporate-tax-to-help-close-chicago-budget-gap-nbc-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/103786\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnson floats corporate tax to help close Chicago budget gap \u2013 NBC Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has vowed not to propose property tax hikes to close the city\u2019s budget deficit, but floated the idea of a variety of corporate taxes to help do so.<\/p>\n

One of those taxes would be a \u201ccorporate head tax,\u201d which could assess a tax for each employee large corporations employ within city limits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s an option,\u201d Johnson said during a press availability Tuesday. \u201cWe’re on the pace to build 10,000 affordable homes. I also made a commitment to hire 200 more detectives, right? I said, we’re going to hire more young people. We’re going to reopen mental health clinics. There are a lot of things that I said I was going to do. This is the perfect time for us now to look at progressive means so that we can continue to demonstrate the positive trend here.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Johnson\u2019s campaign for mayor, he had proposed restarting the corporate head tax that former Mayor Rahm Emanuel had eliminated in 2011. Johnson had proposed imposing a $4 per employee tax on large companies, and anticipated that it would generate $25 million in annual revenue.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s projected budget deficit for fiscal year 2026 is $1.12 billion,<\/a> leading to massive questions about how the Johnson administration would close the gap.<\/p>\n

While Johnson ruled out the idea of raising property taxes, the city\u2019s Chief Financial Officer told Bloomberg that such an increase was \u201clikely\u201d as part of any solution.<\/p>\n

“It is likely that that will be part of the package,\u201d CFO Jill Jaworski said. \u201cAgain, we haven’t rolled out the full package yet, but the package is going to include cuts, and it is going to include proposals for increasing our revenues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChicago’s chief financial officer discussed the city’s financial challenges during an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg, explaining a property tax increase is “likely” to plug the large hole in the 2026 budget.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Johnson insisted Tuesday that he instead wanted to pursue more \u201cprogressive\u201d forms of revenue generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to go after progressive revenue. That\u2019s what the people of Chicago and working class families in particular want to see us do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Johnson also floated the idea of levying a payroll expense tax on Chicago businesses similar to a tax in Seattle, according to WTTW, among other ideas. <\/a><\/p>\n

Johnson described Chicago as one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and that he wanted to explore ways that its wealthiest residents paid their fair share.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important that we look at in a very meaningful way how these individuals with means, particularly our billionaires and ultra-rich, who have benefitted from a growing economy can put more skin in the game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He dismissed ideas that such proposals would cause millionaires and billionaires to flee the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s interesting because millionaires, particularly in the city of Chicago, that population has increased by about 24%. They\u2019re not leaving Chicago. So this notion somehow that we\u2019re scaring millionaires away, it\u2019s just the opposite,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n

Johnson has said a working group will put together budget proposal and release its findings as soon as next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has vowed not to propose property tax hikes to close the city\u2019s budget deficit,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":103787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[20174,960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-103786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-brandon-johnson","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114940116183712424","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}