The majority of the city of Sycamore’s annual revenue comes from sales tax, not property taxes, according to city documents and officials.

Of the $25.4 million the city receives in revenue from various sources, about $12.8 million comes from sales taxes on purchases made within the city, according to information recently shared by City Manager Michael Hall.

At a Sycamore Chamber of Commerce annual event on May, Hall told a crowd of Sycamore business leaders that 20% of the city’s revenue comes from seven businesses: Menards, Meijer, Kunes auto dealerships, DeKalb Sycamore Chevrolet GMC dealership, Blaine’s Farm & Fleet, Hy-Vee and Walgreens.

“When you shop there, that’s roughly $5 million that we get just from those shopping at Menard’s and Meijer, and buy a car – is what I suggest doing – go to Hy-Vee all the time and Walgreens,“ Hall said. ”That’s going to help the city quite a bit. That’s what you need to do in order to help with the sales tax.”

While the city of Sycamore receives $12.8 million a year in sales tax revenue, property taxes raise less than 20% of that for the city.

“Property tax is $2.4 million out of the $25 million revenue that we get, and so you can actually see that it’s really sales tax that drives us, and really, property tax is a small portion of what we do,” Hall said.

In 2025, the property tax levy in Sycamore was increased to $4 million for the current billing cycle by the Sycamore City Council with the expectation that the tax rate would remain flat year over year.

During the May 6 event, Hall said the city’s property tax makes up 6.63% of a typical Sycamore property owner’s tax bill, which is spread out between nine taxing bodies.

“We have no control whatsoever of other taxing bodies; we don’t work together to determine what the tax is going to be, independently we do that,” Hall said.

He estimated that 63.8% of a resident’s property tax bill goes to Sycamore Community School District 427, and 9.47% goes toward DeKalb County government.

“We’re less than 7% of your property tax bill, and you can see the largest portion there is the school district, but their largest revenue source is property tax, whereas ours is sales tax, so it’s a little flipped,” Hall said.