Tag Archives: restaurant tax

Illinois Deferred Sales Taxes From Feb-Apr: Reminder Of Due Dates

I attended the Crain’s Chicago Business Webcast the other day featuring “State of the Illinois Budget with Comptroller Mendoza“, and although I was generally pleased with her handle on the state’s financial situation and her ability to explain it to the audience, I was disappointed that the mediator did not take my question, which was: what are small businesses supposed to do without more state support, especially where tax payments are concerned?

We all understand that Illinois governor has inherited a major fiscal problem — and how it got this way is a complex matter outside the scope of this blog post. But despite this, in my opinion, there simply need to be more forgiveness and deferral options for state sales and income taxes due from small businesses.

For example, the federal government moved the deadline for both first- and second-quarter estimated quarterly taxes to July 15th; but the state of Illinois left them on their original dates (April 15 and June 15). As a result, many self-employed taxpayers and small business owners ended up accidentally paying them late.

And in March, the Illinois Department of Revenue offered short-term relief for late sales tax payments to all registered Illinois retailers operating eating and drinking establishments. But the problem was that the February, March and April sales taxes that were deferred were due in May, June, July and August (along with the sales taxes from the current month). In case you hadn’t noticed… those businesses are in more dire financial straits now than they were back in March.

So let this post serve as a reminder that Payment #3 (of four) of the February-April 2020 deferred sales taxes is due on July 20th. But also let it be encouragement to contact your Illinois state senators and representatives, the Department of Revenue, Governor Pritzker’s office, and Comptroller Mendoza’s office to request leniency where penalties and interest are concerned, and to ask that they consider changing the due dates and waiving all related fees for businesses with balances due of less than $10,000. Small restaurants and bars are no better off now than they were before this pandemic began, and if we want to help them weather the storm, we need the state to help.


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Increase in Chicago Restaurant Tax as of January 1, 2020

City of Chicago Dept of Finance

It recently came to my attention that apparently restaurants in Chicago were not notified by the city of an important change to local taxes they are required to collect.

The Chicago City Council recently doubled the city’s 0.25% restaurant tax, which means that starting January 1, 2020, the city of Chicago’s restaurant tax rate is 0.50%.

Therefore, the total sales tax for restaurants in the city of Chicago is now supposed to be 10.75% instead of 10.50% — this includes state and local sales taxes as well as the city’s 0.50% restaurant tax.

(For restaurants located within the MPEA Food and Beverage Tax zone, the total sales tax will be 11.75% — made up of sales taxes + 0.50% restaurant tax + the 1.00% MPEA food and beverage tax).

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that this change was communicated widely to restaurant owners, so many of them did not update their Point of Sale systems to increase the tax charged to customers. This means they probably underpaid their monthly restaurant tax and will owe when they file their annual restaurant tax returns.

I suggest the following steps:

  1. Update your Point of Sale software to reflect the 10.75% tax immediately, so you can begin collecting it from customers.
  2. Calculate the approximate underpayment for January and February (0.25% of sales) and add it to your restaurant tax payment for March.
  3. It will all come out in the wash when you file your annual restaurant tax return in August.

For more information on state and local changes to legislation, rulings and ordinances that affect restaurants, check out this briefing from the Illinois Restaurant Association: News Laws in Effect as of January 1, 2020 – Illinois Restaurant Association

And for information on this and other consumer taxes in Illinois, check out this recent article by The Civic Federation.