Credit card processing and merchant services in Elgin, IL

Elgin's own share of your sales tax is written into Chapter 4.10 of the Elgin Municipal Code: a 1.5% home rule tax on retail sales and on sales of services. It doesn't reach everything. Most groceries, meaning food sold to be eaten off the premises, are exempt, and so are medicines. Alcohol, soft drinks and food prepared for immediate consumption are taxed, so the grocery shelf and the beer cooler in one store land on opposite sides of the line.

That exemption matters more this year. Illinois stopped taxing groceries at the state level on January 1, 2026, and cities and counties may now add a local grocery tax of exactly 1%. Elgin's home rule tax already left most groceries alone, so the question for an Elgin grocer is whether a local grocery tax applies at the store's address. IDOR's Tax Rate Finder will tell you.

General merchandise moved as well. On August 1, 2026, the transit tax collected for the Northern Illinois Transit Authority rose 0.25% across six counties, Kane and Cook among them. If you haven't touched a register since July, check it against the Tax Rate Finder, one address at a time.

Hotels have one more chapter to read. Title 4 of the code also contains a hotel or motel room rental tax, Chapter 4.24, separate from sales tax. We couldn't confirm its current rate, so get the figure from the City before you set up folios.

Illinois has no surcharge statute, which leaves Visa's 3% and Mastercard's 4% as the ceilings, and its cash-acceptance law won't bind retailers until January 1, 2028. The Illinois page also follows the interchange law due in July 2027.

The Census Bureau put Elgin's population at 115,476 on July 1, 2025, up 0.6% since 2020. Shops, restaurants and hotels here can work with us remotely: POS terminals for the counter, interchange-plus pricing on every account, and a free statement review that breaks down what you pay per card today.