It’s happened to us more than a few times. You order a couple of things that run, say, $6 or $7 each. You figure you’ll get plenty of change back from a $20 to cover the tip— but instead you have to come up with a little extra to make the tip over that yuppie food coupon with Andrew Jackson on it. You’re not just bad at head math— the fact is that you live in the major city with the second highest taxes on dining out in America. (Only Minneapolis is worse. Slightly.)
According to a study by the Tax Foundation, as reported in Crain’s, the Loop’s combined meal tax— which includes the straight up 9.5% state and local sales tax, a city .25 cents tax restaurant tax, and another penny that downtown restaurants collect to pay for Navy Pier and McCormick Place, because how could you expect big corporations to hold trade shows here without you and me helping bail the poor dears out— reaches 10.75%. (And don’t get us started on what we pay because of the insider-owned Park Grill, which is forgiven its rent if it can’t make money in its Millennium Park location.) Even outside that corporate welfare zone, the 9.75% total puts us nearly a penny ahead of New York and Los Angeles among cities of comparable size. And all this is after Cook County sales tax dropped a quarter of a penny at the start of the year— if not for that, we’d have beaten Minneapolis for the title of most-taxed restaurant scene in America. [Chicago Business]
