Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi has plans to reevaluate every single property in the county in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Typically, only a third of Cook County gets reassessed in a given year in what’s known as the triennial assessment. That’s when many property owners are forced to appeal their assigned value because they are locked into an enormous figure until the cycle repeats in three years.  Which is where Madigan and Harmon’s law firms make their money, appealing property taxes. So, property tax reform will never happen in Illinois.

Kaegi’s office informed WBEZ that anyone who believed their property has lost or will lose value due to the pandemic will be encouraged to file appeals in the coming months. Since the protest window has already closed for the 2nd Installment due this summer. Any protest appeals will have to occur after the new reassessment…

The Northwestern Suburbs who were just reassessed with a 35 to 50% increase, so we will all now have to re-appeal the taxes once the new assessment occurs. I personally have never seen a decrease in property taxes from an assessment: during the real estate crisis in 2008 and 2009, there was an apparent erroring the formula, which fixed raised taxes during a real property devaluation.

In Illinois the higher your property is valued, the larger your tax burden. In Cook County, residential property is taxed at 10%, commercial at 25%. Which is why strip malls have so many vacancies in recent years.  Remember Toni Preckwinkle has an entourage to maintain. How do you think these reassessments are going to go?  Is Cook County going to cut their income or increase it?

 

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