Holders of Illinois liquor licensees be warned, changes to the renewal process have been implemented by the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. If you're and old-school, pen and paper type of person the change is likely to be particularly jarring. The ILCC will no longer mail the traditional 6-page renewal application.
Instead, approximately 45 days prior to renewal, the ILCC will email a reminder to the licensee of their forthcoming license expiration. Licensees can still renew via paper app, either in person or via mail. They must login to their
MyTax.Illinois.gov account and print the renewal application.
However, since you're already on the website, there's really no reason
NOT to go ahead and renew online. For most retail licensees, there's still a $150 licensing fee discount for renewing online as opposed to via mail or in person (discounts vary depending on your license type).
As we
detailed here, its really not too hard to renew online. It can be a little tricky to navigate the first year, but for subsequent years, it's maybe a 5-minute process.
So our advice to licensees: know which email you've put down on past liquor license renewals. Check the account periodically to make sure it isn't clogged full of junk email (free email services such as Yahoo and Gmail may deactivate your email after a period of time if it goes unusued or goes over the mailbox size quota). If you use an electronic calendar, go ahead and set a reminder that recurs annually about 30 days prior to your liquor license expiration. This way, even if you overlook or don't receive the ILCC's reminder email, you'll still get a calendar pop-up reminding you to check your
MyTax.Illinois.gov account to renew your license.
Aside from this info, the ILCC's 3rd Quarter Newsletter has several other bits of info or reminders we found helpful this month. Among them are blurbs regarding:
- Illegal importing of alcohol from out-of-state, circumventing the "three-tier system"
- Reminder of who needs the Human Trafficking Posters inspectors may be looking for. (Although they don't link to where you can print them, we've got you covered here).
- Reminders that BASSET training is now mandatory for all IL counties and must be re-taken every 3 years.
- Some helpful tips for retailers to limit their liability exposure.
