Illinois Grocery Tax in 2026: Why Your Receipt Depends on Your Town

On January 1, 2026, Illinois stopped collecting its statewide 1% tax on groceries. That sounds like a clean statewide win, but the same law let every city and county reimpose an identical 1% tax locally, and more than 600 of them did. So the honest answer to "did the grocery tax end?" is: it depends on where you shop.

Either way, this applies only to qualifying groceries: food you take home and prepare. Prepared food, candy, soft drinks, and alcohol were never in the 1% category and are still taxed at the regular, higher rates.

Why Chicago shoppers stopped paying

Chicago is the story's biggest plot twist. The mayor's office wanted to keep the tax, which was worth an estimated $80 million a year to the city budget, but the City Council never voted on it before the state's October 1, 2025 filing deadline. Missing that date meant Chicago could not collect the tax starting January 1, 2026, and the next realistic window (a July 1, 2026 start, requiring an April filing) also passed without a vote.

So in the state's largest city, groceries have been 1% cheaper since New Year's Day. On a $150 weekly shop, that's roughly $78 a year kept in your pocket. Not life-changing, but real, and unusual: Chicago rarely ends up the cheaper option on any tax question.

How to check your own town

Most of the collar suburbs and many downstate cities did reimpose the tax, because the old statewide version was collected by the state but paid out to municipalities, and few towns wanted to give up the revenue. Bloomington, for example, approved its local version in fall 2025; Homewood posted a public notice explaining its decision.

Three ways to check yours, fastest first:

1. Look at a grocery receipt from January 2026 or later and compare the tax line with one from December 2025. If the low-rate line dropped from 1% to 0%, your town opted out.

2. Search the Illinois Department of Revenue's Tax Rate Finder at tax.illinois.gov for your address. Local grocery taxes show up as their own line.

3. IDOR also publishes the full list of municipalities and counties that filed grocery tax ordinances, updated as new towns join.

Local note: if you live near a boundary between a taxing and non-taxing town, the store's address decides, not yours. A few border neighborhoods effectively got a 1% discount at one supermarket and not the one across the street.

Could the tax come back where it ended?

Yes. The law lets any municipality adopt the 1% tax in the future; ordinances filed with IDOR by April 1 take effect July 1 of the same year, and those filed by October 1 take effect the following January 1. Chicago aldermen have discussed reviving it in budget talks more than once, so the city's 0% status is worth re-checking each January rather than assuming it's permanent.

The reverse is also true: a town that kept the tax can repeal it later. This is now a purely local political question, decided in city council meetings rather than Springfield.

What this changes for your budget, honestly

For a typical household spending $600 a month on qualifying groceries, the tax is $6 a month, or $72 a year. If your town kept it, nothing on your receipt changed at all; the same 1% just goes to a different line of government accounting. The people who saw a real change are shoppers in opt-out towns and Chicago.

The more useful takeaway is awareness: Illinois grocery pricing now varies by municipality, which was never true before 2026. If you already drive between towns for errands, the grocery tax joins gas prices and county sales tax differences on the list of small gaps that add up over a year.

Before you go

• The statewide 1% grocery tax ended January 1, 2026, statewide, no exceptions.

• Over 600 towns adopted their own identical 1% tax; check IDOR's list or your receipt.

• Chicago has no grocery tax in 2026 because it missed both filing deadlines.

• Prepared food, candy, soda, and alcohol are unaffected; they were always taxed at higher rates.

• Rules verified August 2026 against Illinois Department of Revenue bulletins FY 2026-03 and FY 2026-11; the IDOR site has the current municipality list.

Quick answers

Did Illinois get rid of the grocery tax? The state did, effective January 1, 2026. But cities and counties can charge their own 1% version, and more than 600 do, so many receipts look exactly the same.

Does Chicago charge a grocery tax in 2026? No. The City Council missed the state filing deadlines, so Chicago groceries have had no 1% tax since January 1, 2026. It could return in a future budget year.

How do I find out if my town charges it? Compare a recent receipt against a December 2025 one, or look up your address in the Tax Rate Finder on tax.illinois.gov.