Illinois continues to close corporate tax loopholes

Illinois’ 2024 budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate tax loophole closures, including the retailer’s sales tax discount. Our work over the course of many years laid the groundwork for this win, and our allies in the Fund Our Futures coalition pushed it over the finish line in 2024. This will lead to hundreds of millions of dollars more for schools, public transit, climate action, health care, and so much more. The People’s Lobby has worked to close corporate tax loopholes for more than a decade. In 2015-2016, we organized a set of large-scale civil disobedience actions led by faith communities – called Moral Mondays Illinois – together with our allies in Fair Economy Illinois. These actions culminated in more than 1,000 people shutting down the Chicago Board of Trade, with dozens arrested in an act of civil disobedience. Then, in May 2017, we organized a 3-week march from Chicago to our state capitol in Springfield, a distance of 200 miles! We slept on church floors along the way, held listening sessions to talk with people about what they wanted to see in our state budget, and engaged in civil disobedience when we got to the capitol. Collectively, these actions led directly to the closure of $125 million in corporate tax loopholes in 2017 and indirectly to another $600 million in 2021 as well as helping lay the groundwork for continued progress in the years since then.