Illinois tobacco taxes explained: cigarettes, OTP, vapes and pouches

The Illinois cigarette tax per pack and how it gets paid

The Illinois Department of Revenue lists the Cigarette Tax as 149 mills per cigarette, which it states as $2.98 per package of 20 cigarettes, and lists the Cigarette Use Tax at the same rate. That is the figure as of September 2026; cigarette rates are set by statute and have moved before, so check the current rate on the IDOR rate page before you build a price list around it.

Nobody in your store writes a check for it. IDOR describes the mechanism: the Cigarette Tax Act imposes a tax on the occupation of selling cigarettes at retail, licensed distributors prepay the tax by buying stamps which are affixed to each package, the distributor collects the tax from the retailer at or before the time of sale, and the retailer passes the tax on to the consumer in the cigarette sale price. The stamp on the pack is the receipt.

Above the state sits the federal excise tax, paid further up the chain still. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau lists small cigarettes at $50.33 per 1,000, which it states as $1.01 per pack of 20. By the time a case reaches your back room, the federal and state amounts are inside the price you paid.

What Cook County and Chicago add, and who those apply to

The local layers are geographic, and this is where Chicagoland retailers diverge. A store in DeKalb or McHenry pays the state rate; a store in Cook County pays state plus county; a store inside Chicago pays all three. Do not stop at the county line, though: IDOR states that cigarette taxes may exist in both home rule and non-home rule municipalities, and that the Department does not collect locally imposed cigarette taxes. Your village or city may levy one of its own, so check your exact address rather than assuming the county answer is the whole stack.

The Cook County Tobacco Tax Ordinance imposes a cigarette tax at the rate of 150 mils, or $0.15 per cigarette, in force since March 1, 2013, $3.00 on a pack of 20. On other tobacco products, the rates printed on the county current self-assessment retail tobacco dealer return are $0.60 per ounce for smoking tobacco, $0.60 per ounce for smokeless tobacco, $0.05 per little cigar, $0.30 per large cigar, and $0.20 per milliliter on consumable products, which is the county term for nicotine liquid. The county publishes its ordinance as a 2016 pamphlet, so check the rates against the live return and the current Chapter 74 supplement rather than the pamphlet alone.

Chicago imposes its Cigarette Tax on wholesale cigarette dealers, who must buy tax stamps before selling to retailers inside the city. The city lists the rate as $0.059 per cigarette or $1.18 per package of twenty cigarettes as of January 10, 2014. Chicago also imposes a Liquid Nicotine Product Tax on retail sales in the city, at $1.50 per product unit plus $1.20 per fluid milliliter effective January 1, 2019.

Chicago other tobacco products: a tax that was struck down, and price floors instead

This one is worth getting right because both halves of the usual advice are wrong. Chicago did enact a separate Other Tobacco Products tax in 2016, and its business affairs department told retailers the rates: $1.80 per ounce of smoking tobacco, $0.60 per ounce of pipe tobacco, $0.20 per little cigar and $0.20 per large cigar, effective July 1, 2016.

It did not survive. In Iwan Ries and Co. v. City of Chicago, 2019 IL 124469, the Illinois Supreme Court concluded that the city ordinance imposing the OTP tax is preempted by section 8-11-6a of the Illinois Municipal Code, reversing the appellate court and affirming the circuit court. The opinion was filed December 19, 2019. Consistent with that, the city Department of Finance tax list carries a Cigarette Tax and a Liquid Nicotine Product Tax but no Other Tobacco Products tax.

What replaced it is not a tax at all, and it is the part that binds a Chicago shelf today. Municipal Code Section 4-64-800 stayed the price floors in Section 4-64-810 and the little-cigar minimum package sizes in Section 4-64-830, but provided that if Chapter 3-49 is invalidated by a court of competent jurisdiction or by legislation, those sections commence on the 90th day following the final judicial determination. That condition was met by Iwan Ries, so the stay lifted 90 days after the decision became final and the floors have applied since 2020. They are $11.50 per package of cigarettes, $11.50 per package of little cigars, $1.36 per large cigar, $4.56 per ounce of pipe tobacco, $11.29 per ounce of smoking tobacco and $4.94 per ounce of smokeless tobacco, and the Commissioner of Health may amend them for the Chicago-area consumer price index on 90 days notice, so confirm the current amounts before pricing.

Section 4-64-820 was never stayed at all. It prohibits honoring a price reduction instrument on a tobacco sale, and prohibits multi-package discounts or selling below the listed price, except for large cigars and pipe tobacco which may be discounted down to any applicable floor. One warning when you go looking: BACP April 2016 retailer notice says the price floors are NOT in effect, and it is still online. It was written three years before the decision that triggered them.

The Illinois tobacco products tax moved to 45 percent

This is the change most likely to be out of date in anything you read that was written before mid-2025. IDOR states that effective July 1, 2025 a uniform tax rate is established, and the rate is now 45 percent of the wholesale price for tobacco products, including moist snuff and electronic cigarettes, sold or otherwise disposed of to a retailer or consumer located in Illinois. Moist snuff is no longer taxed by weight.

For reporting periods from July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2025 the rates were different and are still quoted in older material: 15 percent of wholesale price on electronic cigarette products, 36 percent on other tobacco products, and $0.30 per ounce on moist snuff. If a supplier or a price sheet is still working from those numbers, it is describing a period that ended.

One warning about the state own pages. IDOR Electronic Cigarettes FAQ is useful for licensing, but it still answers the rate question with the old 15 percent figure. The excise rate page and the June 2025 bulletin carry the current 45 percent rate, and the statute controls.

The change came with Public Act 104-0006, which also widened what counts. From July 1, 2025 tobacco products include any product made from or derived from tobacco, or that contains nicotine whether natural or synthetic, intended for human consumption or likely to be consumed, including but not limited to nicotine pouches, lozenges and gum. FDA-approved cessation and nicotine-replacement products marketed and sold solely for that approved use are excluded.

Little cigars are the exception to watch: they do not sit in the 45 percent bucket at all. IDOR states that the Tobacco Products Tax Act taxes little cigars at the same rate as cigarettes under the Cigarette Tax Act and Cigarette Use Tax Act, and that little cigars in packages of 20 or 25 sticks must carry a cigarette tax stamp.

How a tax-inclusive wholesale price works, and why not to add tax twice

Percentage tobacco tax is levied on the wholesale price and is owed by the distributor. IDOR states that tobacco products distributors are liable for reporting and paying the Tobacco Products Tax, and that Illinois law permits distributors to pass the cost of the tax on to the retailer. That pass-through is not a separate charge added at the end of your invoice; it is built into the price of the goods.

Cook County works the same way from the retailer side. Its self-assessment retail tobacco dealer return exists for tobacco a retailer bought on which county tax was not already paid, and the first deduction line on that return is inventory purchased from registered wholesalers. In other words, if you bought from a registered wholesaler, the county tax is already handled and you deduct it rather than pay it again.

The practical rule for your store is short. Tobacco pricing from Gokul is tax-inclusive: the applicable tobacco tax is already in the price you are quoted, so treat that price as the landed cost of the goods, not as a pre-tax figure to mark up and then add tax to. Your retail sales tax obligation at the register is a separate question, covered in the resale and sales tax guide, and it applies to the sale you make, not to the excise that was already settled upstream.

The table below is an illustrative build-up on a pack of cigarettes, using round figures to show where each layer sits. It is not a price quote and not a claim about what any particular pack costs.

Keeping these numbers current without re-reading the statute

Every figure above has a home page updated when the rate changes: the IDOR excise rate page for state rates, the Cook County tobacco tax page for the ordinance and returns, and the Chicago Department of Finance tax list for city rates. Read them at least annually. IDOR also warns that cigarette taxes may exist in both home-rule and non-home-rule municipalities, so check your exact store address rather than assuming the county answer covers you.

Watch for two patterns. A uniform-rate change like the July 2025 move to 45 percent invalidates a lot of older guidance at once and keeps surfacing in stale articles for years. And local rates move in budget season, so a rate with an effective date in the past is current until the page says otherwise.

When a rate moves, what you update is your shelf price, not your invoice arithmetic. On a tax-inclusive wholesale price a rate change reaches you as a change in the price of the goods.