Mayor Solomon’s Crackdown on Corporations Not Paying Their Fair Share Raises Millions More for Jersey City Public Schools
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 14, 2026
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MAYOR SOLOMON’S CRACKDOWN ON CORPORATIONS NOT PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE RAISES MILLIONS MORE FOR JERSEY CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
NEARLY 2,251 BUSINESSES NEWLY REGISTERED FOR THE EMPLOYER PAYROLL TAX THIS YEAR AS THE CITY COLLECTS $75.9 MILLION FOR JERSEY CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, EVERY DOLLAR OF IT GOING TO THE DISTRICT
Mayor announces next step in the crackdown: Increases payroll tax compliance with a signed agreement with the State Treasury that will give the City the employer data it needs to audit payroll tax filings for the first time since the tax took effect in 2019
JERSEY CITY, N.J - Mayor James Solomon announced today that his administration’s crackdown on employers who were not paying the City’s payroll tax has brought 2,251 new businesses onto the tax rolls since January and that the City has collected $75.9 million in payroll tax revenue through August 2026, with every dollar dedicated to Jersey City Public Schools. The Mayor also announced that the City has signed a memorandum of understanding with the New Jersey Department of the Treasury that will, for the first time, give Jersey City the employer data it needs to audit payroll tax filings and identify corporations that are underpaying or not paying at all.
"Every dollar a corporation pays in payroll tax is a dollar our schools don't have to ask of homeowners and renters," said Mayor James Solomon. "I fought for this tax because when a business profits from the workforce and the infrastructure this city provides, it has an obligation to help pay for the classrooms our kids learn in. Passing it was only the first step. Now my administration is making sure every employer who owes actually pays. We went out and found the businesses that weren't paying their fair share and brought them into the system, because the more corporations pay, the less our property taxpayers have to. That's real money in our classrooms."
Bringing Corporations Into the System
The employer payroll tax, which Solomon championed as a member of the City Council in 2018, is levied on employers for wages paid to workers who do not live in Jersey City. Revenue is dedicated by law to the public schools and cannot be spent on municipal purposes. The tax only works, however, when the corporations that owe it are actually registered and paying, and for years the City had limited tools to find the ones that were not.
Since taking office, the Solomon administration has moved on several fronts to close that gap, building on work Solomon began in his Council office. Among the changes: businesses are now required to register for the payroll tax before the City will issue a construction permit, which ties compliance to one of the most common points of contact a company has with City government. The administration has paired that requirement with a broader effort to identify unregistered employers and bring them into the system.
The results are measurable. Since January, 2,251 businesses have newly registered for the payroll tax, generating $689,836 in additional revenue for the district as of the start of August, on top of the $75.9 million collected overall.
The City has already disbursed $20.2 million to the district this year, in payments made in January and March. Two additional vouchers totaling $55.7 million will go before the City Council at its upcoming meeting, delivering the full amount collected to date directly to the schools. In 2025, the City disbursed $112 million to the district.
Next Step: Auditing Payroll Tax Filings
Registration gets a business onto the rolls. It does not tell the City whether that business is reporting its full payroll. Since the tax took effect in 2019, Jersey City has had no independent source of employer wage data against which to check what companies file, which left the City dependent on self-reporting by the very corporations it was trying to hold accountable.
Solomon has been working to fix that since before he was Mayor. As a Councilman, he and State Senator Raj Mukherji drafted legislation authorizing the State Treasury to share employer tax information with the City, and Solomon led the Jersey City delegation that secured its passage in Trenton. The law gave the City the legal authority to obtain the data. The memorandum of understanding announced today is what turns that authority into practice.
The agreement is the product of months of negotiation between the City, the State Treasury and the Office of the Attorney General over precisely which employer data the State will share and the data protection measures the City will adopt to safeguard it. With that data in hand, the City will be able to compare its own registrant list against State records to find employers that have never registered, and to audit the filings of those that have to confirm they are paying what they owe.
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