By: Mark Glennon*
CoreLogic, a California-based financial data firm, today released its analysis showing average Illinois property taxes of 2.67%, over twice the national average of 1.31%. Illinois is the highest in the nation.
Even those averages disguise the personal tragedy inflicted on hundreds of thousands of families whose rates far exceed that, robbing those owners of their home equity. We looked in detail in November at those averages for Chicago’s south suburbs, where average rates exceed a suicidal 5% per year. Plenty of other Chicago area suburbs are just as bad, as we detailed in a follow-up article.
These taxes are a lien on homes, senior to owners’ equity and mortgages, and property taxes directly reduce the value of homes. The press continues to ignore this calamity, falling hardest on the middle class and working poor. Tax rates continue to explode, as every owner in Illinois knows, making this nothing less than a gradual confiscation.
Wake up, Illinois. Radical change is long overdue.
*Mark Glennon is founder of WirePoints. Opinions expressed are his own.
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.
This article gives your effective property tax rate if you live in the Chicago area. But, there are four additional pieces of information you should be aware. 1) What and why is 5% the suicide rate. It’s actually isn’t; it’s approximately 4.3%. 2) How much of your home value has already been destroyed from high property taxes? 3) How much can your taxes actually go up before your home value really starts to crash? 4) How much time do you have before your municipality hits the suicide rate or before it’s too late to escape from Illinois. Here’s a link… Read more »
The hope of politicians and public employees everywhere is that the solution to the fiscal crisis will be to “grandfather” those who have reached a certain age or a certain seniority. This hope isn’t limited to public “servants” but also to social security recipients, career military personnel and everyone else who has worked an unsustainable system to his or her advantage. The hope is based on multiple precedents that have honored the expectations (however unreasonable) of those who have grown old or worked for many years in reliance upon what the politicians have promised. Even the bankruptcy judges have preferred… Read more »
The ones awake are the ones leaving, or have a plan to leave. Politicians have used the recent Supreme Court decisions as their logic for attacking taxpayers as the only way to deal with the shortfalls. To change the pension commitments is too hard, it is easier to gut taxpayers.