Illinois lawmakers approve changes to Chicago casino tax plan
The Illinois General Assembly approved a bill over the weekend that will lighten the tax burden on a future Chicago casino.
Governor J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign the bill into law.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had urged lawmakers to overhaul a tax structure deemed too onerous to attract operators.
“With critical votes this evening, the Illinois state legislature has passed a bill that makes the possibility of a financially viable Chicago casino a reality,” Lightfoot said in a statement. “This moment is decades in the making, and represents a critical step toward shoring up our city’s pension obligations, as well as driving huge levels of infrastructure funding and fueling thousands of new jobs for all of Illinois.”
Illinois legislators included a $45bn Chicago casino development plan as part of a 2019 gaming bill that also legalized sports betting. In April of last year, however, the Illinois Gaming Board released a study stating a casino would be financially unviable due to an effective tax rate of 72%.
The new bill, sponsored by Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, cuts the state’s projected tax revenue from $850m to $500m.
Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, told WTTW, “So we’ll move from an expectation that we had that was infeasible — a reality that we currently have, which would be zero. And now, based on this legislation, we would have approximately $500 million that would materialize as true revenue that would be available to benefit the state.”
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