Over $200 Annual Sales Tax Hike Facing McHenry County Families

At least $18 million will be picked out the pockets of McHenry County shoppers every 12 months if the General Assembly passes the half percentage point RTA-Road Sales Tax Hike.

To put that in perspective, $207 million was collected in sales taxes throughout the county this past year. So, the proposed sales tax increase would hike sales taxes 8.7%.

(Yesterday, I estimated the increase would be at least 7.6% and pointed out how a local newspaper was helping the RTA to raise taxes with its headline. That calculation was based on using the tax rates. This one
uses actual dollars.)

If only the 89,403 households paid the tax, it would amount to $231 a family. But, since businesses pay some sales tax, the figure per household will actually be less.

Maybe you won’t care.

That’s certainly what the legislators behind this tax hike are hoping.

If the legislation becomes law, the Regional Transportation Authority will get another $9 million. About $100 per McHenry County family.

Almost half of the RTA’s McHenry County $9 million will go to the Chicago Transit Authority, according to Kevin Craver’s Northwest Herald article.

And the county board will get the same amount–$9 million–to spend, apparently as it wishes, on roads it wants to improve. That’s almost twice as much as $4.6 million collected in McHenry County Motor Fuel Taxes this past year.

The county board just decided to borrow $50 million to improve roads. If the $9 million per year were similarly bonded, an extra, what, almost $100 million could be spent on roads.

County board members might not even have to take the heat for raising the taxes…unless the legislators decide to require them to approve the tax hike. (Rockford recently passed a sales tax hike to pay for roads.)


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