As the state of Illinois prepares to eliminate its 1% tax on groceries, Oak Park is expected to become the latest suburb to adopt the levy.
Lawmakers, who said that the community stood to lose $1.4 million in tax revenue upon elimination of the tax, are expected to vote Tuesday night to keep the 1% tax in place beginning in January 2026.
Under provisions of Illinois’ budget agreement for Fiscal Year 2025, communities have until Oct. 1 to introduce their own version of the 1% tax, which until now had been handled by the state. Funds collected from the tax were redistributed back to communities where it was collected under the previous system.
Now, municipalities will be tasked with deciding whether or not to continue collecting the tax.
According to state law, the tax is levied on food that is not intended to be consumed on the premises where it is purchased, with exceptions for food purchased via SNAP benefits.
The city of Chicago has not yet voted on whether to retain the 1% tax, though Mayor Brandon Johnson had previously warned that the city could lose up to $80 million in annual revenue if the levy isn’t assessed on purchases.
As the state of Illinois prepares to eliminate a statewide tax on groceries, the city of Chicago could join dozens of suburbs in keeping the levy, as Jenn Schanz reports.
He reminded residents that the tax is already collected, and that it wouldn’t mean an increase in taxes assessed on grocery purchases.
“The city of Chicago will not enact its own grocery tax. The grocery tax already exists. There is a process in which the collection of the grocery tax is now being placed in the responsibility of municipalities,” he said at a recent press conference. “We’re not creating a grocery tax. We’re just creating a process by which we can collect it.”
The tax was temporarily suspended during the COVID pandemic, but was reinstituted in 2022, according to lawmakers. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced during his 2024 State of the State address that the state would no longer collect the tax beginning on Jan. 1, 2026, putting that task instead on communities that chose to retain the 1% levy.
Dozens and dozens of communities have voted to keep the tax in place, including Cicero, Berwyn, Des Plaines and Downers Grove.
Aurora, Illinois’ second-largest community, recently pushed back a vote on whether to decide to keep the tax in place. Naperville lawmakers are expected to vote on a measure that would increase the community’s sales tax to a full 1% in an effort to offset the loss of revenue from the grocery tax, according to NCTV 17 News.