SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Jan. 11, 2024) – The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization, issued its 2024 Main Street Agenda for Illinois. The agenda includes the top legislative priorities for small businesses going into the new General Assembly session.

“Small business owners have been slammed by burdensome new regulations over the past few years,” said Noah Finley, NFIB Illinois State Director. “One-size-fits-all policies—from COVID-19 shutdowns to paid leave—have disproportionately hit small businesses. NFIB’s Main Street Agenda calls on the legislature to take into account the needs of small business owners when crafting policies and avoid onerous new burdens on job creators across the state.”

NFIB’s 2024 Main Street Agenda includes the following:

• Protect Employers from Onerous New Mandates – NFIB opposes additional harmful mandates on small businesses such as new employer gag laws, predictive scheduling, paid family and medical leave policies, and industry-specific or tipped-worker minimum wage increases.
• Fight for Tax Relief – NFIB will advocate for overdue tax relief for small, family businesses including a reduction of the state’s estate tax burden on small businesses.
• Safeguard the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund – NFIB will monitor any program or policy changes to the state’s UI Trust Fund that would increase the tax burden on job creators and small businesses.
• Oppose Backdoor Attempts to Use the Bureaucratic Process to Impose Additional Mandates on Job Creators – NFIB will monitor and engage in the rule-making process to prevent bureaucratic excesses and to clean up ambiguous provisions to recently passed new mandates.

View the full agenda here.