Two weeks before unveiling what could be his final city budget, Mayor Brandon Johnson is determined to go down fighting by taxing corporations he claims are “making a killing” — and doubling down on his technology taxes.
The 29-member City Council coalition that rejected Johnson’s corporate head tax has already established three boundary lines for the preelection budget debate: no property tax increase, no “head tax or tax on job growth” and no counting on money from Springfield not yet approved.
On Wednesday, Johnson drew his own line in the sand.
He said he will use his 2027 budget to level the playing field that has allowed corporations to make “more money … than they’ve ever made in the history of the world,” including the “free labor period of slavery,” while working people “are standing in lines for food.”
“We’re losing our democracy. I talk about Justice [Louis] Brandeis [who said], ‘You can either have a democracy or wealth in the hands of a concentrated few, but you can’t have both,’ ” Johnson said.
“What other approach should I take? I can tell you the approach that I’m going to take. I’m gonna take the approach of the interests of working people to my budget. That is it. That is all,” he said.
The mayor accused his City Council opposition of “coddling individuals that are already being protected by Donald Trump.” And he hinted strongly that he would erase the city’s $882.4 million shortfall by raising the same taxes he used last year to start shifting Chicago’s tax structure to match the digital economy.
Those taxes include the personal property lease transaction tax on cloud computing, data processing and software platforms otherwise known as the “cloud tax”; a higher tax on online sports betting; and a tax on social media companies that is still the subject of a court challenge — with revenues held in escrow.
All three tech-oriented taxes are doing better than expected.
“Are City Council members upset with the PPLT? That’s a tax on corporations. Are they upset with the SMART [social media] tax? That’s a tax on corporations. Even the state did that one. The digital ad tax. That’s a tax on corporations. Are they worried that we’re gonna lose jobs because we have a digital ad tax?” Johnson asked, referring to the tax he has long championed that’s now working its way through the Illinois General Assembly.
“How is it that the state of Illinois can institute a digital ad tax, my social media tax, the PPLT tax — and that doesn’t get any sort of coverage of opposition — but a tax on the largest corporations that benefit from the services that we provide are somehow being attacked? You can’t have it both ways.”
Johnson opened his news conference by acknowledging what he called the “heartbreaking loss” of Eddimar Paola Hernandez, the 7-year-old girl stabbed to death Saturday in Chatham while walking down the street with her older sister.
Shavon Gayden, a woman with a history of committing random acts of violence, has been charged with first-degree murder in the attack near 86th Street and Cottage Grove.
After reaching out to Eddimar’s family, Johnson vowed to “show up for them publicly by investing in Chatham and neighborhoods across the city that continue to experience intolerable violence.”
“We will invest not only in the resources that show up after a tragedy. We will invest in the resources that prevent tragedy from happening at all, because resources are what prevent tragedy,” Johnson said. “I don’t fight for mental health clinics to reopen to appease a nonexistent mental health clinic lobby or for youth jobs because there are well-connected teenagers asking me to do so. I fight for those things because responsible investment in people reduces violence.”
Johnson’s tax-the-rich argument is not moving Chicago voters, according to a new poll conducted Sept. 20- 24 by One Future Illinois, a public policy advocacy group that led the charge against Johnson’s corporate head tax.
For the fourth straight month, the mayor’s favorability is stuck as 31%, while 68% of the 606 likely Chicago voters surveyed by Change Research rate the mayor as unfavorable.
Asked how the budget shortfall should be eliminated, 54% of those surveyed said: “Collecting more of the money, fines and fees already owed to the city,” while 74% wanted the city to “cut spending before raising taxes and fees.”
Business taxes that include cloud computing and a revived head tax were supported by just 29% of those polled. Only 5% supported raising property taxes.
