Chicago Mayor Sidekick Nabbed for Back Taxes After Years of Illegal Tax Breaks

Neither Mayor Johnson nor his aides can play by the rules

Another member of Mayor Brandon Johnson's City Hall gang has been forced to pay back taxes after years of being a privileged scofflaw who felt she was above the rules under which the rest of us have to suffer.

The latest to get her tax dodge comeuppance is Mayor Johnson’s city budget director Annette Guzman, who for the last five years had been taking advantage of lower property taxes based on an illegal tax break she had wrangled. Now she is being forced to make up the difference and pay in what she should have been paying all along, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Guzman reportedly saved $3,432 in taxes on her South Loop condo that she uses as a money maker by leasing it out to renters.

So, how did Guzman get this illegal tax break? Her former boss, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, quietly gave her the illicit tax status. And now that Guzman has been outed by the Sun-Times, Kaegi is compounding her corruption by ordering that Guzman only has to pay back a portion of the thousands she saved. Kaegi has ruled Guzman only has to pay back $2,071.29 of her illegally saved tax bill, not the full fare. It’s nice to have pals in high places, apparently.

This means Guzman is only being required to pay back three year's-worth of her ill-gotten gains instead of the full five years of back taxes.

To her credit, Guzman did own up and pay off the whole $3,432 despite being told by her pal, Kaegi, that she only owed three of the five years of her property taxes. However, the paper found Guzman is still getting illegal tax breaks on other properties even as she was outed on the South Loop property.

The budget chief has registered her Bronzeville condo as her primary residence and is claiming the homeowner's exemption there. But she is illegally claiming the same exemption for her South Loop condo despite not living there for seven years and using it as a rental property.

In reply to all this, Guzman claims she was wholly unaware that her old pal Kaegi was giving her all these tax breaks since leaving the County Assessor's office in 2020 and taking Johnson's budget office position for a fat $195,696 annual salary.

Guzman, of course, is hardly the only person in the Chicago government gang who has been caught defrauding the city of tax dollars.

Readers will recall CTU boss Stacy Davis Gates also took write offs on taxes in Indiana and didn't pay her water bill in Chicago, despite earning a hefty $290,000 in annual salary.

The teachers union chief had to pony up more than $1,500 for back taxes owed for unpaid property taxes, according to Indiana's St. Joseph County assessor's office.

This was a similar case to Guzman's taxing sleight of hand, too. Gates tried to claim a homestead exemption on the Indiana home even though her primary residence is in Chicago, not Indiana. eventually the assessor's office there caught onto the trickery.

But that wasn't Gates' only skirting of tax laws. She was also forced to cough up $5,381 in April of 2024 for having somehow “forgotten” to pay her Chicago sewer and water bill for four years.

This is the same CTU chief who goes around blasting "the rich" for "refusing to pay their fair share."

These haughty tax cheats, though, have been led by example. After all, back in 2023, Brandon Johnson himself was finally forced to pay his outstanding debt of more than $3,000 for past water bills he had refused to pay.

It came to light, when he was running forthe mayor's seat, that he had been conveniently "forgetting" to pay his water bill since 2014!

The media also reported at the time that he had an additional $1,044 in unpaid traffic fines, too.

Apparently, the tax avoidance epidemic in City Hall washes down like a tidal wave from the top.

‍

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Warner Todd Huston | Facebook, X at @WTHuston, or Truth Social at @WarnerToddHuston.