Illinois Sales Tax by City

2026 rates for Illinois' major cities

Anatomy of Chicago's 10.5%

Chicago is the country's cleanest illustration of the rate stack — four governments, one receipt:

The transit layer is the moving part: December 2025's transit-reform law — which creates a successor Northern Illinois Transit Authority — raised the RTA tax 0.25 points region-wide on 1 August 2026: 1.25% in Cook, 1% in the collar counties (DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Will). That county split, plus Cook's own 1.75%, is the whole story of the Chicago–Naperville gap: district borders, not city virtue.

The grocery-tax handover

Illinois taxed groceries at a reduced 1% state rate for decades. On 1 January 2026 the state tax ended — and the same law invited municipalities and counties to impose their own 1% grocery tax by ordinance. Over 600 localities filed in time to start on day one², so the practical outcome is a patchwork: identical grocery baskets are taxed at 1% in one suburb and 0% in the next. (General merchandise is unaffected — this is only the grocery rate.) How states treat groceries generally is mapped in grocery and clothing sales tax by state.

Sourcing: Illinois' famously mixed rules

Illinois is the standard example of a mixed origin/destination state, and the rules changed twice recently³:

• In-state store sales: origin-based — the store's own combined rate.
• Remote sellers with economic nexus (no Illinois presence): destination-based state + local ROT at the buyer's address — the "Leveling the Playing Field" regime, since 2021.
• Out-of-state sellers WITH an Illinois presence shipping from outside the state: destination-based ROT since 1 January 2025 — previously they collected only the flat 6.25% use tax, which quietly under-collected everywhere local rates apply.
• Since 1 January 2026: the 200-transaction nexus threshold is repealed (the $100,000 test stands alone), destination sourcing extends to the Service Occupation/Use taxes, and a remote-retailer amnesty runs 1 August – 31 October 2026 for past under-collection.

The nexus mechanics and the amnesty are covered in depth in the Illinois 2026 nexus guide — this page stays on the rates.

Why two sellers can charge different rates for the same delivery

Illinois is one of the few genuinely mixed-sourcing states, and it is the reason Illinois rate questions are harder than the table suggests. An Illinois-located retailer charges origin-based Retailers' Occupation Tax at its own location; a remote seller charges destination-based rates at the customer's address.

So an identical product delivered to an identical Chicago doorstep can legitimately carry different totals depending on whether the seller sits inside or outside Illinois. If you are comparing two quotes and the tax differs, that asymmetry — rather than an error — is usually the explanation.

The January 2026 grocery handoff

Illinois ended its 1% state grocery tax on January 1, 2026, but the same legislation authorised municipalities to impose their own 1% local grocery tax — and more than 600 have adopted one. Grocery tax in Illinois did not disappear so much as change which government collects it.

For a shopper that means whether you pay depends on your municipality rather than on state law, and two neighbouring suburbs can treat the same basket differently. For a retailer with multiple locations it means grocery taxability is now a per-store setting rather than a company-wide one.

Working with Illinois rates

Because sourcing depends on who you are and rates depend on where the buyer is, resolve Illinois rates from the delivery address and your seller category together. The rate lookup gives the address's combined rate, each city page — Chicago, Naperville, Springfield — calculates with current figures, and the reverse calculator splits any Illinois receipt back into price and tax.