SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker, five months before Democratic primary voters head to the polls as he runs for a third term as Illinois governor, released partial tax records Wednesday showing he and his wife reported more than $10.3 million in taxable income — including more than $1.4 million in income from gambling.

The billionaire governor has used his personal fortune as an heir to the Hyatt Hotels Corp. to bankroll his political campaigns while also helping fund other Democratic causes nationwide. As has been done annually since his first run for governor, Pritzker’s campaign released incomplete information detailing his wealth, as it did not provide his full federal and state income tax returns, which could reveal greater details about his financial interests.

In addition, Pritzker holds a substantial portion of his wealth in trusts. Since entering public life, Pritzker and his campaign have repeatedly declined to release tax records related to those trusts, making the information difficult to independently verify.

But in the records his campaign has released, the $10.3 million in taxable income the governor and his wife, MK, reported for 2024 was the highest total in several years. For 2023, the figure was $3.2 million, and the year before that it was $2.3 million. For 2021, the Pritzkers reported $18.5 million in state taxable income, with the majority of that — $11.3 million — coming from capital gains.

Pritzker does not take a salary as governor, an office he’s held since 2019.

Asked why the Pritzkers reported three times more state taxable income last year than the year before, a spokesperson for the governor’s campaign said in an emailed response that “certain trusts make distributions each year, and the taxable income associated with those distributions changes from year to year based on the performance of trust assets.”

The trusts benefiting the governor in 2024 paid $4.5 million in state taxes and $30.2 million in federal taxes. In 2023, Pritzker trusts paid $10 million to the state and about $50 million to the federal government, according to the campaign. Those returns were not disclosed publicly.

The Pritzkers in 2024 paid approximately $1.6 million in federal taxes, about $300,000 more than the previous year, according to the returns, while the couple paid $512,120 to the state, which is about $358,000 more than what the couple paid in state taxes in 2023.

The 2024 tax return records showed Pritzker and his wife reported making $1.425 million in income from “gambling.” Asked for additional details, the Pritzker campaign spokesperson said, “The Governor had winnings and losses from a casino during the year and those amounts are reported on his tax return.”

Meanwhile, Pritzker’s running mate for the 2026 election, Christian Mitchell, reported in 2024 making over $583,600 in state taxable income while paying $28,890 to the state in taxes and about $160,000 in federal taxes, the campaign said.

Forbes, which keeps a regular record of billionaires, placed the governor’s net worth at $3.9 billion as of Wednesday, just higher than its $3.7 billion estimate when he released his tax returns in October of last year.

Pritzker’s campaign every year discloses the top pages of his federal and state tax returns, which only show a partial picture of his personal wealth. Much of his fortune is in domestic and offshore trusts.

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

The Pritzkers also made $3.3 million in personal charitable donations in 2024, up from $1.65 million in 2023 donations, the campaign said.

Pritzker has spent about half a billion dollars in political funding, including for other candidates, last year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago and support for abortion rights. He has self-funded his campaigns and spent more than $130 million in 2022 to defeat Darren Bailey, the downstate Republican who was backed by ultrarich megadonor Richard Uihlein.

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

Originally Published: October 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM CDT