Lawmakers call for wealth tax, end to tax havens, eliminating corporate loopholes to generate billions for essential public programs 

Advocates call on Governor Pritzker, General Assembly to fix Illinois’ broken tax system, defend state from federal attacks

Springfield, IL — The Illinois Revenue Alliance and Illinois State Senators Graciela Guzman, Lakesia Collins, Karina Villa, Robert Peters, and Robert Martwick held a press conference at the Illinois State Capitol Wednesday to announce a slate of bold revenue measures designed to protect working families and ensure Illinois can fully fund essential services amid looming federal attacks.

The legislative proposals would overhaul Illinois’ deeply unequal tax system by requiring billionaires and large corporations to finally pay what they owe—generating billions to fully fund essential public services at a moment when Illinois families face growing economic pressure and devastating federal cuts loom.

“With the Trump administration attacking working families by going after Medicaid, SNAP, childcare funding, and other crucial programs—all so he can give bigger tax breaks to billionaires like himself and Jeff Bezos—we need our elected leaders to step forward and do the right thing” said Jenny Smith, a Champaign-based homecare worker and member of SEIU Healthcare Illinois.

Lawmakers and advocates described a stark reality facing the state where working people find themselves paying more and more in taxes while billionaires, Big Tech companies, and massive corporations exploit Illinois’ broken tax system. The result: draining resources from essential services like SNAP, Medicaid, and child care.

“If you live in Illinois, you pay a greater percentage of your income in taxes than almost anyone of any income status anywhere in the country. That’s not right,” said State Senator Robert Martwick. “And on top of it, we gut essential services. We make cuts to programs that are nothing more and nothing less than abject cruelty. Taking health care from sick people, taking food assistance away from hungry people when we don’t need to.”

Illinois currently has the 8th most unequal tax system in the nation, effectively rigging the tax code to benefit billionaires and powerful corporations at the expense of working families. That inequality is becoming increasingly dangerous as the Trump administration moves to slash federal funding for Democratic-led states, including $1 billion in child care funding in Illinois. 

“The villains are easy to spot: they’re those who allow the billionaires and mega-corporations to get rich off of years of gaming the tax code. They are the ones that allow them to siphon billions out of our state. And they are the ones that push the cost onto the rest of us,” said Heather Wills, Deputy Director at Workers Center for Racial Justice. “The villains want to divide us. They want to distract us. All while SNAP, Medicaid, child care, transit, and immigrant services are put on the chopping block.”

At the same time, Trump-era tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy from the ‘Big Ugly Bill’ passed last summer are automatically state law if leaders don’t take action, blowing an estimated $500 million hole in the state budget next year alone.

“This summer, Washington passed a federal budget that cut billions from SNAP and Medicaid while delivering $9 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals in Illinois. The cost of that decision was pushed down to the states, and now we’re being told there’s ‘no money’ to protect people from hunger and homelessness,” said Nick Dodson, a Housing Navigator with the Heartland Continuum of Care. 

To meet this moment, lawmakers announced four revenue measures that would deliver the resources needed to protect and strengthen the public programs Illinois working families count on:

• A Billionaire Wealth Tax: A “mark-to-market” wealth tax on billionaire asset appreciation, ensuring extreme wealth growth is taxed just like wages and raising an estimated $916 million in FY27.
• A Digital Advertising Tax: A 10% tax on digital ad revenue from the largest Big Tech corporations profiting off Illinoisans’ personal data, generating an estimated $1.1 billion in FY27.
• Worldwide Combined Reporting: Closing offshore tax avoidance by multinational corporations shifting profits to tax havens, raising an estimated $1.2 billion annually.
• Closing Corporate Loopholes: Rolling back costly Trump-era tax giveaways and long-opposed business loopholes, generating roughly $700 million per year.

“I’m tired of taxes being on the backs of working class people,” said State Senator Lakesia Collins. “[Closing corporate loopholes] alone would generate an estimate of $700 million annually—that’s revenue we desperately need to protect essential services and invest in our communities.”

“Most people feel stuck in America, not on an island, not on a yacht, but in their homes,” said State Senator Robert Peters. “We need to take the money from these ultra-rich billionaires and make it so less people have to go to a food pantry. Make it so a safety net hospital is able to stay open…We cannot cut services for people.”

Both lawmakers and advocates called on Governor Pritzker and the General Assembly to step up and be the heroes working families need by taking immediate action this session to pass progressive revenue measures that restore fairness, stability, and dignity—and ensure Illinois programs are properly funded and protected from ongoing attacks from Washington.

“Working families pay a much higher tax rate than most billionaires, big tech, and corporations like Amazon—who pay their workers so little that many of them rely upon state public assistance programs to survive,” said State Senator Graciela Guzmán. “They are hopeful that in the fear and chaos of everything the Trump administration is yielding in our communities…that we in the state of Illinois won’t connect these dots—that we will fail to fix our broken tax system and resort to cutting services for working families instead of forcing the very rich to pay what they owe.”

Workers and lawmakers alike emphasized that working families didn’t create this fiscal crisis, and they shouldn’t have to pay for it. Cuts to public programs are not inevitable so long as state leaders act and level the playing field for Illinois families. 
“Budgets are not just numbers on a page,” said State Senator Karina Villa. “They’re the faces of all these families. Budgets are moral documents.”erate billions to fully fund essential services and protect families from ongoing federal attacks.