New Illinois Budget Passes: Here’s What’s About To Be Taxed

Illinois lawmakers barely passed the budget before the deadline.

The Illinois state legislatures had a constitution-mandated deadline of June 1st to pass the state's new budget for the next fiscal year.

According to NBC Chicago, they passed the new budget, which includes $55.3 million in estimated revenue. Governor Pritzker is praising it as the state's 7th consecutive balanced budget. As with many things in politics, state Republicans and Democrats didn't agree on this one.

Illinois Democrats reports that the budget includes:

• $2.8 billion- state's Child Care Assistance Program
• $721 million- Monetary Award Program (grants for over 150,000 students)
• funds for "safety net hospitals"
• funds to hire and train up to 200 new Illinois State Troopers

The Taxes

There were several notable measures in this year's budget. One new revenue source for the budget is a tax on online sports betting. It will be a tax of 25-cents per wager for the first 20 million online sports bets in the new fiscal year. After that amount of bets have been placed, it goes up to a 50-cent tax on all bets after that.

Illinois is trying to curtail "unregulated gambling" in general, which is evident in a bill from this legislative session that wouldn't allow betting on arcade games.

The Bill In Question: New Illinois Bill Targets Dave & Buster's In A Specific Way

Also under the new budget, tobacco products will increase to 45% tax rate. That includes e-cigarettes and vapes, all tobacco products in general.

Another tax will hit certain companies that do business in Illinois, specifically ones that do more than $100,000 worth of it in the state. They will have to assess state taxes, even if they don't have a physical location in Illinois (so this would be companies like Amazon).

Also of note is that the state's gas tax isn't going to fix the roads. Part of the budget includes transferring the fuel tax from the Road Fund to the General Fund. This is the second year in a row the money has gone to the General Fund. The current fuel tax in Illinois is going to stay at what it is until June 30th, 2026.

CBS reports that Illinois' new budget seems to have eliminated a healthcare program that provides benefits to undocumented immigrants between the ages of 42-64. Governor Pritzker estimates it will save the state $330 million.