How was your property tax bill?
That’s what we thought.
Property owners in Cook County had a Sept. 1 deadline to pay the second installment of their taxes, and for a lot of people the number on that bill came as a big shock. It was particularly grim if you live in the south and west suburbs, which saw the first impact of a recent property reassessment.
But wait, the reassessment was supposed to be capped at 7 percent, right? The legislature passed a bill a few years ago that was supposed to ease the impact of the assessments on property tax bills.
Yes, it did. But a lot of people have found out since then that the assessment cap wasn’t exactly as friendly as advertised. In fact, it caused many homeowners to pay higher taxes.
The way the cap is structured, it helps some homeowners and hurt others. And it forces virtually all commercial property owners to pay more in taxes.
A study released earlier this year by the University of Illinois found that in Chicago, 52 percent of residential properties paid higher taxes because of the so-called tax cap. Those homeowners, and Chicago businesses, had to make up the tax revenue that was lost to all the homeowners who got a break from the cap.
Cruelest of all: You were most certain to pay higher taxes because of the cap if you owned a home that wasn’t appreciating very quickly in value.
This isn’t a tax cap. It’s tax roulette, and it’s patently unfair to several hundred thousand homeowners in Cook County. It also creates a disincentive for businesses to locate in the county.
The tax cap has the strong support of Mayor Richard Daley and Cook County Assessor James Houlihan, who get to argue that they’ve done something for beleaguered homeowners. But they haven’t been very willing to acknowledge that what they did for many homeowners was raise their taxes.
Last spring, Daley and Houlihan pushed the legislature to renew the assessment cap law, which will expire this year. The Illinois Senate fell in line, but the House wisely deferred. There is likely to be more pressure brought on the House to OK an extension of the law when it meets later this year.
The law must be allowed to expire. It is creating more confusion in the property tax code, it is picking winners and losers. It is a gimmick and, for some homeowners, a very expensive one.
