Governmental leaders in Lake County, hopefully, are savvy enough when it comes to treating our corporate neighbors with some respect. Unlike Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who wants to impose a “head tax” on Windy City businesses.
Johnson, seeking to stem a deepening deficit, has proposed the $21-per-employee monthly tax on city corporations that employ more than 100 workers. He claims the “head tax,” which would pluck more than $100 million from corporate pockets, will help in reducing a more than $1 billion hole in next year’s city budget.
“We will be asking large corporations to put a little more skin in the game,” the baiduhai quoted the first-term mayor as saying in a recent story. “We’re asking the wealthiest 3% of companies to put more skin in the game to keep our city safe.”
Except, corporations aren’t piggy banks to dip into. Most of them already have that “skin in the game” through employee volunteerism and corporate donations to various community causes.
That was on display earlier this month as employees at Abbott Laboratories worked for the BackPack Program sponsored by the Northern Illinois Food Bank to provide food for needy area families. Foodstuffs in the rucksacks provide enough for nine to 11 meals, according to Steve Sadin’s front-page story in the Oct. 24 News-Sun.
“Good nutrition is essential for good health,” Kathryn McKenzie, vice president of the Abbott Fund, the healthcare corporation’s philanthropic foundation, told Sadin. “We want to help people live healthy lives. We have a longstanding relationship with the Northern Illinois Food Bank.”
The Abbott Foundation donated $250,000 to fund the food bank program, while approximately 20 Abbott volunteers spent two hours at the food bank’s Lake Forest facility assembling bags of food for backpacks, which ultimately benefited nearly 300 children, Sadin reported. Approximately 190 schools in Chicagoland, including those in Antioch, Fox Lake, Gurnee, North Chicago, Waukegan, and Zion, participate in the BackPack Program.
A quarter of a million dollars isn’t chump change when it comes to funding food. Especially for those folks who also receive benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some 2 million Illinoisans will soon be caught in the squeeze of the federal government shutdown, as the USDA says it will not expend SNAP funds next month.
Perhaps Chicago’s Johnson overlooks what corporations have provided over the decades to the city’s residents through volunteerism and monetary donations: From cultural activities, to community programs, to athletic endeavors. The Bank of America Chicago Marathon, of which Abbott is also one of the chief sponsors, brought some 100,000 runners, families, support staff and media to the city this month, spending money filling up hotel space and eateries.
For communities, businesses are their golden geese. They pay taxes, provide jobs and usually give freely with funding when asked.
Yet, Johnson wants to roast his golden geese with the proposed “head tax.” The city had a similar tax from 1973 to 2014, charging companies with 50 or more workers $4 a head.
It raised an estimated $35 million a year until former Mayor Rahm Emanuel ended it, calling it a “job killer.” Johnson, however, disagrees.
“It’s not a job killer … it’s a job creator,” the mayor said at a press conference. That incredible assessment doesn’t jibe with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who pointed out recently: “It penalizes the very thing that we want, which is we want more employment in the city of Chicago, and it makes it very hard to attract companies from outside of Chicago to come into Chicago and harder for companies that are in Chicago to stay.”
The “head tax” would apply to any company operating in the city, regardless of where its headquarters are, so long as employees spend at least 50% of their time working in Chicago. It’s not like companies have to remain in the city. McDonald’s executives must be kicking themselves after moving their headquarters with 2,000 workers to Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood after nearly 50 years ensconced in suburban Oak Brook.
As we have seen with many corporations bolting Illinois for Wisconsin and Texas, states are lurking to snare companies and their employees. Few U.S. cities tax corporations for the number of employees, and for good reason.
In 2018, the Seattle City Council approved one, but canceled it after a call for a referendum on the issue and neighboring communities, such as Tacoma, began lobbying city companies to move. The math back then was obvious in the Pacific Northwest.
It should be here, too, as most Illinois corporations pay their fair share per head.
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Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
X @sellenews