Receipt Confirmed: Cook County Sales Tax Rolls Back

By: Thomas Frisbie | January 2nd, 2013

Chicago area motorists still are waiting for toll booths on the Tri-State to be pulled out, as authorities said would happen long ago.

State taxpayers still are waiting for the "temporary" income tax surcharge - enacted in 1989 - to end. (It was made permanent in 1993, and a new surcharge has been added on top of it.)

As for the money from the state lottery going strictly to schools, taxpayers aren't exactly waiting for that to end. They're waiting for it to start.

So it's not that surprising that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle felt she deserved to take a bow today for finally eliminating Todd Stroger's sales-tax grab. As of Tuesday, the county sales tax dropped to 0.75%, where it had been before the County Board under Stroger increased it.

At an event to mark the tax rollback, Preckwinkle was joined today by representatives of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce at Abt Electronics in Glenview. Abt says it is one of the largest independent electronic retailers in the country and so presumably it took a hit from the Stroger increase.

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