On January 1st, 2024, the three-quarter percent public safety facilities tax for the new Warren County Law Enforcement Center went into effect. During visits to local businesses, retired Warren County State’s Attorney Chip Algren found that not all were charging the new sales tax:
“We contacted the state of Illinois and we were told that the majority of merchants do their transaction with the Department of Revenue regarding sales tax online. They establish what is called a My Tax Account and what happens is they report their taxable income to the Illinois Department of Revenue. The Illinois Department of Revenue then automatically determines how much the merchant owes them in sales tax. What we were told was that if a merchant is not collecting it, they are still paying for it to the state of Illinois, meaning that Warren County would receive its anticipated income. That would mean that if the merchant is not passing it onto the customers, it is coming off their bottom line.”
As it has been several years since Warren County has increased their own sales tax, Algren breaks down the current tax rate throughout the County:
“In the City of Monmouth, the current sales tax rate is 10 percent, except for the Love’s Truck Stop, that area is 11 percent because the city added an additional 1 percent to help pay for the infrastructure the city put in place when Love’s came to town. The rest of Warren County, which includes Roseville, Little York, Kirkwood, and all the rural area, sales tax is 8 percent. Out of that sales tax, the state of Illinois receives 6.25 percent, so on a 10 percent in the City of Monmouth, the state of Illinois is receiving over 60 percent of the sales tax collected. Only about 40 percent actually goes into the local economy through coming back to local government.”
Within the next couple of weeks, Warren County will receive their first payment from the Illinois Department of Revenue, determining if the sales tax is meeting the anticipated revenue. Additionally, during the research Algren conducted, he found 9,700 merchants collected sales tax in Warren County during 2023.
