Brandon Johnson is the mayor of Chicago, a leftist who rose from obscurity to high office in 2023. His principal backer is the teachers' union. In 2025 he faced a $1.2bn budget deficit, equivalent to a fifth of the city's operating budget, triggered in part by the final winding down of pandemic-related federal support.
Johnson proposed reintroducing a $21 per employee monthly "head tax" on any business employing more than 100 workers and substantially raising a sales tax on services like software paid mostly by businesses. He framed this as asking "large corporations and the ultra-wealthy to chip in more". On November 17th 2025 the city council finance committee voted down his proposals 25 to ten.
Johnson is notably unpopular. A generation ago Chicago's mayors could usually bully aldermen to adopt whatever they proposed; under the two Richard Daleys budgets often passed unanimously. Johnson lacks such clout. J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, opposes his tax plans, as do most businesses.
A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and the real reason.