Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker approved legislation on Aug. 6 that restores the full tax credit allowance on first division vehicles that are traded in at retail. Since 2020, the allowance has been capped at $10,000.

Senate Bill 58 also resets small trailer license fees from $118 to $36. It had been $18 until last year. Both changes take effect Jan. 1, 2022, although customers who trade in their vehicles now, obtain an advance trade-in credit and then wait until Jan. 1 to buy their next vehicle would receive credit for the full value of their trade-in.

Both the trade-in cap and the higher plate fee were instituted as lawmakers in 2019 sought to fund Pritzker’s Rebuild Illinois capital infrastructure plan.

Consumers welcomed the restoration of the full tax credit allowance on their traded-in vehicles. Dealers, whose new- and used-vehicle inventories are at lows rarely seen, hope it will mean fewer private sales and more transactions at dealerships.

Two bills last spring would have returned the license plate fee back to the previous cost of $18. But the Transportation for Illinois Coalition — a group of statewide and regional business, organized labor, industry, governmental and nonprofit organizations which lobbied for the capital bill’s passage in 2019 — warned that lowering the fees that much would take revenue away from state construction projects.

Lawmakers reached a unanimously approved compromise by raising the certificate title fee by $5, from $150 to $155, to replace the revenues lost from the give backs. The law is effective Jan. 1.