Rick Heidner and Alisa Heidner, who run one of the biggest state-licensed video gambling enterprises in Illinois, have been slapped with a $5 million lien by the IRS, which says they have failed to pay that much in past-due federal income taxes.
The Barrington Hills couple’s Gold Rush Amusements has video gaming devices in 745 businesses that have reported taking in roughly $3 billion in bets over a recent 12-month period, records show.
Their representatives say they have agreed to a payment plan with the IRS to make good on their unpaid taxes.
The Heidners didn’t contest that they owe $5,083,274 in personal income taxes from 2021.
A spokesman won’t say how much income tax the Heidners paid for that year and, in a written statement, gave this explanation for not paying the $5 million they should have:
“The IRS lien came about because the Heidners’ 2021 tax filings included an accounting reclassification of a loan as a taxable distribution of income, which they knew at the time of filing significantly increased their tax bill.
“Due to rising interest rates and other challenging economic conditions, they paid what they could at the time of filing and always intended to pay the remaining federal taxes, with interest and penalties, with revenue generated from Heidner business operations.”
The spokesman says the couple doesn’t owe any taxes to the state of Illinois, which granted and regulates the gaming license for Gold Rush.
Through the payment plan with the IRS, all that the Heidners owe is expected to be paid “by the end of August, putting an end to the lien,” according to the statement.
Separately, Rick Heidner and Gold Rush have been embroiled in litigation with the company’s biggest competitor — Accel Entertainment, which is the state’s largest video gaming operation — regarding $30 million Gold Rush borrowed from Accel in 2019, records show.
A spokeswoman for the Illinois Gaming Board says the state agency was notified of the Heidners’ IRS debt. But she won’t say when that happened or answer other questions — not even what the state’s requirements are for notification in a circumstance like this.
“We have no comment,” the spokeswoman says.
In 2019, the gaming board moved to revoke Gold Rush’s state license to operate over allegations of improper financial conduct, but dropped that effort a year and a half later.
The agency — whose members are appointed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to regulate legal gambling in Illinois — has proposed rules that Heidner has said would cripple his business model of owning commercial or retail buildings and leasing them to tenants who sign contracts to lease Gold Rush video gaming machines.
State law prohibits video gaming operators from also controlling the venues where their machines are located. Some of those tenants, though, are businesses owned by the Heidners’ children and the Heidners’ employees.
The gaming board awarded a video gaming license in December to James J. Banks, a Chicago zoning attorney and banker. Rick Heidner has portrayed Banks — who is the founder and chairman of Belmont Bank & Trust — as a competitor, though Belmont Bank has given Heidner companies nine loans totaling $3.8 million on Cook County properties in recent years, including seven mortgages for businesses that provide video gaming.
In 2019, Heidner, who also runs a real estate empire based in Hoffman Estates, was named in search warrants for a political corruption investigation into then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval and others. Heidner later got a letter from the U.S. attorney’s office saying he wasn’t a target of an investigation at that time.
The IRS lien was filed April 28 with the Cook County clerk’s office against all property owned by the Heidners.
The IRS won’t comment on the lien.
“The lien was not the result of an audit or any dispute over the amount of taxes the Heidners owed,” according to the Heidners’ statement.
Since the IRS filed the lien, Heidner and his companies have continued to make campaign contributions to public officials, including $5,000 to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle earlier this month and $25,000 to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in May.
Johnson has said he would support lifting the city’s ban on video gaming machines as part of his effort to bring in more tax revenue.
