Why does a Chicago receipt carry a Checkout Bag Tax line? Who collects the Bottled Water Tax, or the amusement tax that reaches your streaming bill? The city keeps a register that answers a piece of each question: the Department of Finance’s list of “Entities currently registered with the Chicago Department of Finance to pay or collect and remit a City of Chicago tax administered by that department.” Read whole, it holds 41,940 registrations — one row per registration, a name appearing once per tax — covering 33,219 distinct names across 35 tax-type labels. The biggest line is not the restaurant tax: it is the Ground Transportation Tax, with 10,299 registrations. The register’s reach is national — 6,947 registrations list addresses outside Illinois — the file carries 62 distinct state codes — with California’s 1,687 leading — and its corners are small: 14 registrations for the Boat Mooring Tax, 11 for a label that reads “Amusement Tax for Social Media,” and two taxes with exactly one registrant each. No name from this file appears on this page: its entity types include sole proprietors and individuals, so this register is counted, never quoted.
Registered Taxpayers (mxx7-qhgq), 41,940 registration rows — a name appears once per tax type — retrieved August 28, 2026 · 33,219 distinct names, counted and never printed · tax-type labels exactly as the file prints them · no tax rate appears on this page; current rates live on the city’s own tax listThe register’s big lines
| Tax type, as printed | Registrations |
|---|---|
| Ground Transportation Tax | 10,299 |
| Use Tax for NonTitled Personal Property | 8,921 |
| Restaurant Tax | 7,378 |
| Personal Property Lease Transaction Tax | 6,037 |
| Liquor Tax | 1,767 |
| Amusement Tax – Subscribers to Paid TV Programming | 951 |
| Amusement Tax – | 934 |
| Telecommunications Tax | 770 |
| Bottled Water Tax | 766 |
| Checkout Bag Tax | 642 |
The Ground Transportation Tax tops the register at 10,299 — and its entity-type column explains why: alongside 6,838 corporations sit 1,318 sole proprietors and 807 individuals — a tax line where one-person registrations sit beside corporate ones. What role any registrant plays in the trade, the register does not say; our taxi and rideshare coverage, linked below, reads those files directly. The Restaurant Tax line runs 7,378 registrations; the Liquor Tax, 1,767.
The receipt lines people ask about
The register puts a registration count behind each of those receipt labels. The Checkout Bag Tax — the per-bag charge printed on grocery receipts — has 642 registrations on the register. The Bottled Water Tax has 766. The Fountain Soft Drink line has 283. The amusement-tax family, counted label by label exactly as the file prints them: “Amusement Tax – Subscribers to Paid TV Programming” (951), a bare “Amusement Tax –” (934), “AMUSEMENT TAX FOR SPORTS WAGERING” (24), “Amusement Tax – Resellers” (16), and “Amusement Tax for Social Media” (11). What each tax charges, and on what, is the city’s to state and changes over time — the city’s tax list, linked above, carries the current terms; this page counts who is registered.
Who the registrants are, and where they are
By entity type: 24,538 corporations, 13,255 limited liability companies, 2,192 sole proprietors, 845 individuals, 469 limited partnerships, 324 not-for-profit corporations, 283 partnerships, and a tail of smaller labels including 27 marked UNKNOWN. By address: 34,993 registrations — 83.4 percent — list Illinois, and 31,342 — 74.7 percent — list Chicago itself. The out-of-state rows spread wide: 1,687 registrations from California, 667 from New York, 471 from Texas, across the file’s 62 distinct state codes. An address far from the city line can still sit on Chicago’s registration rolls; what any registrant owes, the register does not say.
The register’s smallest corners
Read from the bottom, the file is a tour of how specific a city tax can get. Fourteen registrations for the Boat Mooring Tax. Thirty-three for the Motor Vehicle Lessor Tax. Fifty-nine for the Valet Parking Tax. Seventy-seven for the Shared Housing Surcharge. Eighty-five for the Cigarette Tax and 63 for the Liquid Nicotine Product Tax. And at the very bottom, two labels carry exactly one registration each: the Electricity Infrastructure Maintenance Fee and the Intertrack Admissions Tax. A label with a single registration is still a line on the register — the file holds the row either way.
- Source: the city’s Registered Taxpayers file (mxx7-qhgq): 41,940 rows, retrieved August 28, 2026, all aggregates computed on the portal. The portal describes the file as “Entities currently registered with the Chicago Department of Finance to pay or collect and remit a City of Chicago tax administered by that department.”
- Grain: one row per registration — a business registered for several taxes appears once per tax. The file holds 33,219 distinct names; counts of registrations and counts of businesses are kept apart.
- Names: the file’s entity types include SOLE PROPRIETOR and INDIVIDUAL, so a business name can be a person’s name. No name from this file is printed on this page; every figure is a count.
- Rates: no tax rate appears on this page. Rates and terms change; the city’s own tax list is the current reference, and registration counts here say nothing about how much any tax collects.
- Labels: tax-type labels are counted exactly as printed, including the five distinct amusement-tax labels; they are never merged into one figure.
Computed by KCM Desk from the Department of Finance’s taxpayer register, retrieved August 28, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
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