Chicago‘s mayor Brandon Johnson is pushing a ‘mansion tax’ on sales of homes of more than $1 million, as his administration continues to push higher tax on households earning over $100,000.
The newly elected mayor, who took over from his disastrous predecessor Lori Lightfoot in May of this year, wants to push a hike in taxes in order to fight homelessness in the city.
Allies of Mayor Johnson, 47, have also announced plans to push a $12-billion plan for the city titled ‘First We Get the Money’.
The plan, seemingly named after a quote from the 1983 film Scarface, aims to build a ‘more just’ Chicago by slashing funding for the police and implementing new taxes in the city.
Johnson believes people that own properties worth $1 million in the third-largest city in the U.S. are ‘rich, and should pay if they sell those homes’.
The plan, named ‘Bring Chicago Home’ is a compromise from his previous plan that would have seen the transfer-tax rate triple from 0.75 percent to 2.65 percent.
According to the National Review, Johnson is now proposing a three-tier progressive-transfer rate.
This means that sales below $1 million would see the tax cut from 0.75 percent to 06. percent, while property owners who sell their homes for between $1 million and $1.5 million would see tax rates rise from 0.75 percent to 2 percent.
Property sales of $1.5 million and above would see their tax rate quadrupled to three percent of the transfer amount.
A search of real estate sites by DailyMail.com showed that it was difficult to find substantial sized properties for over a million dollars, with the majority being condos or small townhouses.
According to Midwest Real Estate Data seen by Chicago Business, there were 2,391 homes sold for $1 million or more in Chicago last year, down 14.5 percent from the previous year.
Zillow is also currently reporting that the average price of a home in Chicago is $287,709, which is down 1.2 percent over the last year.
Hellbound and Down 