Illinois Municipal League Statehouse Briefing

Posted October 2, 2017 in Legislative briefs

The IGFOA does not advocate on or for specific outcomes of legislation or other proposals. Accordingly, the IGFOA takes no position on information disseminated, neither encouraging or discouraging action, and leaving the decision on how to proceed with individual members.

Representative DeLuca Files Bill to Reduce State Administrative Fee on Locally-Imposed Sales Taxes
State Representative Anthony DeLuca (D-Chicago Heights) filed HB 4101 on Wednesday, September 27. The bill (available via this link) would reduce the new administrative fee enacted by the state on the collection of locally-imposed sales taxes from 2% to 1%. The Illinois Municipal League (IML) drafted the bill and has been working with Representative DeLuca to build support for passage.

The administrative fee was part of the State Fiscal Year 2018 budget legislation that became effective after Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto of SB 42 was overridden by the General Assembly. The budget authorized the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR) to collect 2% from the total revenues generated by 14 locally-imposed sales taxes prior to distributing the tax revenue to the local governments that have those sales taxes in place. The administrative fee is estimated to remove a total of $60 million from affected local government budgets statewide.

Audit Filing Clarification Bill Introduced by Representative DeLuca
On Thursday, September 28, Representative DeLuca filed HB 4104 (available via this link). The bill is an IML initiative to clarify that annual audit reports required to be filed with the Comptroller can be filed and accepted using either the accrual or cash basis methods of accounting. IML reported on this issue in our September 11 Statehouse Briefing (available via this link). That Briefing included links to additional resources concerning the issue.

The Comptroller has declared that audits using cash basis or modified cash basis accounting methods are not compliant with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and statutory law. IML has been advocating to preserve the option for municipalities to file their annual audits with the Comptroller’s Office based on the cash basis method of accounting.

IML will pursue passage of both the sales tax administrative fee reduction bill and the audit filing clarification bill during the fall Veto Session (October 24-26 and November 7-9).

As always, IML staff will continue to monitor any prospective legislative developments and aggressively advocate on behalf of our membership. Should you have any questions, please contact our legislative team at IMLLegislation@iml.org. Thank you.
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**ILLINOIS MUNICIPAL LEAGUE**
500 East Capitol Avenue | PO Box 5180 | Springfield, Illinois 62705
phone: 217-525-1220 | fax: 217.525.7438
email: IMLLegislation@iml.org
www.iml.org