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In total, $15.8 billion worth of property value in Cook County was unavailable for governments to tax in 2021 because of those breaks, UIC researchers found. That translates into about $1.6 billion in tax revenue, which governments simply shift onto other property owners. Savings for homeowners who claim the breaks come at the expense of those who don’t or can’t, like renters or owners of certain offices or businesses.
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
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Old Joe’s old crib outside of Detroit has a property tax bill of $2200!
My old crib in Chicago has a $26k annual property tax bill.
How can anyone afford to pay over $2k/month in property tax? Plus a mortgage? Crazy nuts!
No wonder the house has gone into foreclosure numerous times.
County Assessors are subscribing to services like LexisNexis to uncover homestead exemption fraud by multi-property landlords.
Be aware that it is legal to take this exemption so long as proper paperwork is signed by tenants, and proper filings are submitted to Assessors. Enforcement is often lax, as in CPS Enforcement of its own policies against fraud.
https://risk.lexisnexis.com/products/homestead-exemption-fraud-detection
People have been committing homestead exemption fraud for as long as I can remember. There is no penalty for committing it. Pappas made sure it extends indefinitely and you don’t need to file an affidavit every year. I’ve actually tried to bust some fraudsters and was told by the assessor’s & treasurer’s office that there is no enforcement mechanism. If they really want to have some fun, bust these fraudsters retroactively. LOL
Exemptions do not cause a loss of revenue by even 1 penny in a PTELL county. Cook county has Ptell but not Chicago. Anyone getting an exemption or abatement or reduction of any kind increases the tax rate to compensate. The taxing bodies get what was levied not billed or collected from the year before plus 5% max if they chose to so they lose nothing
There are 39 counties under Ptell excluding Chicago and they are for the most part in the most populous counties. That is why property taxes and tax rates are so high like in Rockford.
This article sounds like a bit of a trial balloon to see what the reaction is to maybe thinking about reducing the homestead exemption benefit. Great idea. We already have the second highest property taxes in the entire country, so now the crummy little benefit that homeowners get should be looked at? There is simply no cruel, unfair and comical proposal our Illinois Dems won’t consider because they know they are unbeatable at the polls
Dolton, for example, a hypothetical home valued at $150,000 would have a property tax bill of $9,368 including general homestead exemption savings of $2,792. Are you kidding me? We pay 5K a year for a seven figure home in Colorado – Move now!
A friend of mine has a $675,000 house in South Carolina. Property tax $1820 with homeowner’s exemption and a $200 elderly credit. Some retired friends in Lake County have a $760k property with a$15,900 tax bill. That $14k a year difference over ten years, with a little luck investing it, is a pretty meaningful savings for most folks.
All because of Ptell like I mentioned above. The lower the home value the higher the tax rate to compensate making the percentage taxes of total home value higher.
“Things might sound good and beneficial, then it turns out they have all kinds of unanticipated consequences.” — Toni trying to differentiate herself from sub-90 IQ Brandon Johnson who is utterly incapable of understanding counterfactual conditional hypotheticals. — “When They Demand Equity, They Mean Your Equity in Your Home” – Steve Sailer ““Exemptions may make sense for an individual homeowner. … But what’s the expression? What’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander,” Weber said. “From the perspective of the taxing jurisdictions, municipalities, school districts, that’s just going to make them have to increase their tax rates… Read more »
Some ring counties around Atlanta exempt senior citizens from ALL school district tax-increment charges on real estate taxes. Their senior homeowners pay $ZERO to support school district. Net result? Participating counties reduce real estate taxes for an average single-family house to less than $1000/year for their senior homeowners. These Georgia counties believe senior citizens shouldn’t be charged for school district costs, given they’re not likely to utilize those schools. Commendable policy. No K-12 school-age kids; no public school-related charge obligation. Likelihood of such a policy here to ever be implemented in Cook County, even for low-income senior citizens dependent upon… Read more »
Missing from article’s discussion: majority of real estate tax funds are directed to local school districts, many quite small, but nonetheless staffed with lots of desk-bound “administrator staffing”. If Cook County school districts were consolidated into larger districts with more schools within designated new districts, then their burdensome administration payroll and pension costs could be trimmed. Larger school districts COULD streamline governance without built-in redundancies of multiple positions duplicated by individual school districts. Illinois also has far more “townships” than other states, hundreds of political mini-fiefdoms with little actual work-responsibility, that “work” easily redistributed to other government agencies. These “township”… Read more »
Any and all district consolidation would be done in bad faith with the goal of siphoning off funds from better off communities to neighboring and less well-off communities. Also known as looting your neighbor’s wealth. Politicians would spread around the loot with no appreciable benefit to the homeowner or student, but the teachers and existing administrators would make out like bandits: Naperville would subsidize lavish salaries and pension for Aurora, Park Ridge for Des Plaines, Lake Bluff/Forest for Highwood and North Chicago, Homewood and Floosmoor for Chicago Heights, River Forest for Maywood, Long Grove for Wheeling, St. Charles for South… Read more »
What would make the most sense is to have consolidated school districts that cover K-12 for a specific area. For example, River Forest and Oak Park share a high school district but have separate K-8 districts. That could be one school district.
Sure, that would make sense administratively, but doesn’t get you anywhere politically. Our politicians would pervert consolidation from cost savings into cost redistributing. OPRF’s western neighbors, Proviso East in Maywood, is only 2.0 miles as the crow flies. But it’s a world away financially. Politicians would salivate to consolidate Maywood’s lack of resources with Oak Park/RF excessive resources. The would redraw boundaries, reallocate resources, increase taxes through bond referendums, etc. Our slimy politician use every opportunity for ‘equity’ which is described as YOUR home equity.
Naperville = Aurora, on real estate tax basis. Aurora has casino, premium shopping mall, lots of industrial parks
DesPlaines = Park Ridge, again re: tax generation. In fact, DesPlaines probably has more.
River Forest = Oak Park, already share HS, strong prospect for consolidation of PreK-8, notoriously high salaries for superintendent, administrators and teachers alike.
Lake Forest + Lake Bluff + Waukegan
Highland Park + Highwood + Deerfield + Riverwoods, HP/H and D/R already share HSs, etc. Again, notoriously high salaries for superintendents, administrators and teachers.
Not quite… “The Education Trust New York notes that “providing a quality education to low-income students requires 40 percent more funding than for non low-income students.” Similar spending between Naperville and Aurora, roughly $15,000 vs. $14,000 respectively, is inequitable.
Like I said, consolidation of school districts won’t lead to savings, it will only lead to Naperville subsidizing Aurora, with Aurora spending up to 40% more per pupil because of a high concentration of low-income students.
In theory, if we were a Republican state, consolidation could bring great benefits. In IL, not so much…
http://edreformnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Resource-Equity-IL.pdf
Again, for the record, I’m all in for consolidation. But I just don’t trust our state’s politicians to do it effectively.
Giving with one hand, such as exemptions, and taking away with another, such as increased tax rates, works well for Illinois politicians as the voters, prompted along by the Illinois media, focus on the exemption and the implied generosity of said politicians. Just another example of the mess that Illinois is as voters ironically vote for things that they think makes life better when actually their vote make things worse in true Illinois style.
Of course the effect of the homeowner exemption is to raise taxes on rental and nonresidential property owned by those not receiving other political favors. In olden times it was thought that homeowners are more likely than renters to vote, so they got this little favor.
Perhaps this report is an effort to deflect attention away from excessive costs of “services” that local taxes fund.
with help from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and the University of Illinois Chicago’s Government Finance Research Center. Once I saw these two agencies involved, I knew they were coming after homeowners. The purpose of the exemption is to differentiate between Ma and Pa Homeowner living in their home vs Joe Investor or Ma and Pa Landlord who are renting out their house while soaking up the sunrays in Florida. But they’re saying the quiet part out loud: Landlords push property tax costs onto renters, and no exemption for landlords means renters pay. But they’re not too quick to… Read more »
In other words, means test you out of your meager exemption if you live in any above average suburb.
We need to get away from properties being the main source of revenue for all the taxing bodies. What does the property itself need? Fire/police-that’s it. The Occupants are the ones using some or all of services offered. Property does not go to school or parks/etc. The people that reside in them so we need to get away from taxing properties for every taxing body and have a multi-pronged approach. One’s ability to pay is never in the equation. How many people lose their homes because of the inability to pay the taxes for services they will never need like… Read more »