Gov. Pritzker, wife report income dropped $16M

Couple reported about $2.3M in state taxable income

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his wife saw a substantial drop in their state taxable income last year as the billionaire Democrat successfully sought a second term, partial tax records released Friday show.

The governor and M.K. Pritzker reported nearly $2.3 million in state taxable income in 2022, the lowest total since Pritzker began publicly releasing their tax returns during his winning campaign against multimillionaire Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018. For 2021, the Pritzkers reported $18.5 million in state taxable income, with the majority of that — $11.3 million — coming from capital gains.

The governor paid $209,948 in personal income tax to the federal government last year and $108,982 to the state, the returns show, significant drops from the $4.7 million in federal and $883,789 in state income taxes paid in 2021.

However, trusts benefiting Gov. Pritzker, a Hyatt Hotels heir, paid $42.3 million in federal taxes and $7.2 million in Illinois taxes last year, according to Pritzker’s campaign.

Pritzker does not take a salary as governor.

Since entering public life, Pritzker and his campaign have repeatedly declined to release tax records related to the trusts, so the information cannot be independently verified.

The records Pritzker releases each year — the top pages of his federal and state returns — offer only a partial picture of his vast personal fortune, which Forbes pegged at $3.5 billion as of Friday. That was down from $3.6 billion last year and makes him the 326th-richest person in the U.S. and the fifth-richest member of his family, according to the magazine.

Much of Pritzker’s wealth is held in domestic and offshore trusts, many of which were set up in the Bahamas by his grandfather.

After first being elected in 2018, Pritzker gave control of his personal investments to an independent trustee at Northern Trust Co., a move he said would allow him to avoid potential conflicts of interest. He also promised to divest himself of “his personally-held direct interests in companies that have contracts” with the state, though he has never provided a full accounting of those transactions.

While Pritzker refers to the arrangement as a “blind trust,” experts have said the arrangement isn’t truly blind because the trustees have to provide him with the information necessary to complete his mandatory economic interest disclosures.

The Better Government Association has documented some overlap between investments held in the trusts and companies with state contracts.

Pritzker has said he has no control over those decisions and has promised to make a final accounting of any returns he’s earned on investments in companies that held state contracts during his tenure as governor upon leaving office and make equivalent contributions to charity.

J.B. and M.K. Pritzker made $1.1 million in charitable contributions in 2022, the governor’s campaign said, without releasing any documentation of those contributions.

That pales in comparison to the amount Pritzker has spent on political contributions, most significantly bankrolling his own campaigns.

In all, he’s spent $350 million on his two runs for governor, both of which he won by double-digit margins. Last year, Pritzker spent $167 million of his own money to defeat Republican state Sen. Darren Bailey by nearly 13 points.

The Pritzkers reported earning $5.1 million in state taxable income in 2020, $2.4 million during his first year in office in 2019 and $4.4 million during the 2018 election year. In 2017, the year Pritzker left the private equity firm he ran with his brother, the couple’s state taxable income was $55 million.