At this week’s City Council meeting, I introduced an ordinance that would reinstate the corporate head tax eliminated under Rahm Emanuel. 

Under this ordinance, which could generate as much as $100 million annually, businesses with more than 50 employees would pay an additional monthly per-employee tax. There would be exemptions for employees in neighborhoods struggling with high crime and unemployment. 

A renewed corporate head tax is part of a suite of progressive revenue options a group of City Council colleagues and I are backing that could generate as much as $4.5 billion annually. 

As the Sun-Times put it, “that would be enough to wipe out an $838 million shortfall, cover ballooning pension payments, and still have plenty left over to bankroll $1.9 billion in new investments to build affordable housing, re-open shuttered mental health clinics, provide free childcare and education for kids under five and year-round jobs for young people at $15-an-hour.”

While some of these options are longer-term changes that require action by the state legislature, the choice before us is clear: We can either continue hiking property taxes and cutting public services, or we can look for new sources of revenue from those who can most afford it.