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On June 1, the Illinois legislature passed a tax on the digital advertising revenue of tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet (parent company of Google). Big Tech resisted the measure and will likely challenge it in court. Nevertheless, several analyses show the tax may generate $800 million annually, a number that could increase with time as revenues from digital advertising are expected to grow. The number would represent a major increase in Illinois state’s budget, but still only a sliver of the mega-corporations’ runaway profits.

This breakout victory for movement organizations demonstrates how grassroots organizing can fight back against widening wealth gaps, cuts to essential services, ballooning corporate power, and growing authoritarianism. It shows us that long-haul alliances, bold agendas, and collaboration with progressive legislators can seize on a growing consensus that the most powerful corporations — especially Big Tech — have too much power and wealth and must pay their fair share.

Our fight to make big corporations and the ultra-rich pay their fair share in Illinois began nearly two decades ago. In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, our three organizations — ONE Northside, Grassroots Collaborative, and The People’s Lobby, with support from national groups like People’s Action — all began to organize (alongside many others) to confront a growing crisis: Corporations and the wealthy were getting richer every year and regularly receiving new corporate tax breaks and bailouts, while budget cuts were devastating our communities.

From 2015 to 2017, our state went through three years of budget disasters triggered in the short term by right-wing billionaire Gov. Bruce Rauner but also made possible by a long history of bipartisan pro-corporate leadership in our state. Our organizations saw the need to respond to these disasters by taking up new campaigns to tax big corporations. We held a series of civil disobedience actions led by faith leaders targeting Governor Rauner’s top donors, occupied the state capitol as the Revenue Truth Squad, and led a 15-day, 200-mile march from Chicago to Springfield, until the state finally passed a budget that included $125 million in new revenue from closing corporate tax loopholes. By 2018, every Democratic candidate for governor made a graduated income tax a key part of their platform to address Illinois’s budget crisis. Gov. JB Pritzker won with a mandate to improve state funding for essential services by taxing the rich. The legislature then put a constitutional amendment on the 2020 ballot to make that possible. Our coalitions joined with other key allies, like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and a broad array of labor unions, to support the Fair Tax ballot referendum. The votes fell short in a tough loss to a billionaire-funded counter-campaign, but legislators who worked closely with our movement like State Sen. Robert Peters then closed $655 million in corporate tax loopholes in 2021. Every year since, we have continued demanding and winning budgets that make big corporations pay more to fund essential services across the state.

Wealth Taxes Will Barely Slow Inequality. So Why Do the Super-Rich Resist Them?

What We Did Differently This Time

Our efforts from 2016 to 2025 together clawed back over $1 billion annually from major corporations. Still, this was short of meeting our communities’ needs or improving our standing as the state with the eighth-most regressive tax code. That revenue helped make possible stronger investments in public schools, health care, and human services after the Rauner budget impasse, but it still left major gaps in education, transit, housing, and care for seniors and people with disabilities. In 2024, our organizations helped launch the Illinois Revenue Alliance (ILRA) along with a core of collaborators from earlier fights and newly engaged groups who recognized the growing need to tax the rich.

Our efforts from 2016 to 2025 together clawed back over $1 billion annually from major corporations.

Our efforts from 2016 to 2025 together clawed back over $1 billion annually from major corporations.

In 2026, we knew we had to ramp up. The........

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