Morton Grove is now among a growing number of municipalities that will impose a local grocery tax when the state one is repealed effective next year, with the Village Board approving an ordinance earlier this month.
Officials said that without imposing the local tax, Morton Grove stands to lose more than $150,000 in sales tax revenue.
Village Administrator Charles Meyer explained the ordinance before the board at its April 22 meeting amended a current village code to add a new article entitled “municipal grocery tax.”
Usually, measures come before the board twice before a vote is taken. Meyer asked for the second reading to be waived on this grocery tax proposal, then trustees approved it on a 5-0 vote.
“This simply adds this fee to our code,” Meyer told the board. “It compliments the grocery tax we have in place. This will go into effect next year after the state changes its guidance on the grocery tax. We have already addressed the ordinance.”
The Morton Grove ordinance instituting a 1% municipal grocery tax also imposes a municipal grocery service occupation tax at the same rate “upon all persons engaged, in the municipality, in the business of making sales of service, who, as an incident to making those sales of service, transfer groceries,” according to the ordinance.
All taxes will be administered, collected, and enforced by the Illinois Department of Revenue.
Last August, Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation repealing the state’s grocery tax. On Dec. 10, the Morton Grove Village Board adopted an ordinance establishing a municipal grocery tax at a rate of 1% of the gross receipts from the sales of groceries in the village.
According to a legislative summary drafted by Meyer for the April 22 meeting, if trustees had not adopted the ordinance, “the village would lose approximately $152,000 in revenue currently generated through its share of the state grocery tax.”
In a March 18, 2024 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Pritzker stated why he wanted to repeal the state grocery tax.
“We ought to eliminate the regressive sales tax on groceries and put money back into the pockets of the working families of Illinois … the cost of food is high, and state government doesn’t need to add to that burden,” Pritzker wrote in the op-ed. “There are some who are fighting against this tax cut, and their excuse is that local governments need their residents to pay grocery taxes. They have even threatened to raise property taxes and cut services if we give everyone some relief at the grocery checkout counter.”
He further asserted that “state government has nearly doubled its funding of local governments in the last 14 years, yet most locals have done very little to ease your tax burden.”
Pritkzer signed that into law, joining what he said included 37 other states that eliminated the 1% grocery tax.
Since then, dozens of other villages including nearby Des Plaines, Lake Zurich, Schaumburg, Buffalo Grove and Wheeling, also approved a 1% grocery tax that will go into effect Jan. 1.
The 1% grocery tax in Morton Grove will take effect Jan. 1, 2026.
Elizabeth Owens-Schiele is a freelancer.
