Tax returns show Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his wife took in $18.5 million in 2021 — the most since 2017

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and wife M.K. reported $18.5 million in state taxable income last year, more than three times what they reported in 2020 and the most they’ve earned since 2017, according to tax returns released Friday.

Pritzker, a billionaire tech entrepreneur and heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, does not take a salary as governor, and the couple’s income comes largely from investments that have been placed in trusts. Most of the income, $11.3 million, was from capital gains, the returns show.

The Pritzkers paid $4.7 million in personal income tax to the federal government and $883,789 to the state, the returns show.

The Pritzkers reported earning $5.1 million in state taxable income in 2020, $2.4 million during his first year in office in 2019 and $4.4 million during the 2018 election year.

“Some trusts are required to give distributions every year and in some years they did better, some years they did worse,” Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Eliza Glezer said when asked about the fluctuations in income.

In 2017, the year Pritzker left the private equity firm he ran with his brother, the couple’s state taxable income was $55 million.

The tax documents released Friday — the top pages of his federal and state returns — offer only a partial picture of Pritzker’s vast personal wealth, which Forbes estimated at $3.6 billion as of Friday. That was up from $3.2 billion in 2019, the year he took office, and puts him at No. 310 on the magazine’s list of the wealthiest people in the U.S., up eight spots from last year.

Much of Pritzker’s wealth is held in domestic and offshore trusts, many of which were set up in the Bahamas by his grandfather. Trusts benefiting the governor paid $14.6 million in state taxes and $68.6 million in federal taxes last year, according to his campaign.

Pritzker has repeatedly declined to release his full tax returns or any records related to the trusts.

Pritzker defended the practice in an interview earlier this month, saying that “the broader picture” is covered in the economic interest disclosures he files annually with the state.

“Your tax return actually doesn’t tell people what you have an ownership interest in and so on. … I’m revealing vastly more in my statement of economic interest than is required,” he said.

Pritzker’s economic interest statement for 2021 includes a seven-page list of assets valued at more than $10,000 and another four pages of assets that generated more than $7,500 in income last year. The forms do not give the value of individual investments or specific returns generated by their sale, neither of which is required under state law.

After being elected, 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. He 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.

The Better Government Association has documented some overlap between investments held in the trusts and companies with state contracts.

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

“I hope it’s clear that I’ve had no intention of profiting from being in public life,” Pritzker said in the recent interview. “And, in fact, I think you could argue, based upon the dollars that you all continue to write about me investing in the political world, that it’s pretty obvious that it’s not advantageous from a financial perspective.”

In 2021, Pritzker deposited $35 million from his personal fortune into his campaign fund, dwarfing the nearly $1.1 million his campaign said he and M.K. Pritzker personally contributed to charity last year.

He’s followed that up with another $110 million to his campaign fund so far this year as he seeks a second term.

Pritzker pumped $171.5 million into his 2018 campaign and another $58 million to the failed 2020 effort to amend the state constitution to create a graduated-rate income tax.

His Republican opponent, state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, last month released five years’ worth of federal tax returns, showing the ups and downs of agriculture. His federal adjusted gross income ranged from a high of $211,108 in 2018, the year he was first elected to the Illinois House, to a loss of $164,961 in 2020. Last year, he and wife Cindy reported a loss of $99,264.

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com