My little home's property tax doubled. Trump Tower got a 30% tax break. Don't blame Fritz.
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It was with a sigh of relief when a year so so ago and after 30 years we paid off our mortgage.
But this week we received our Cook County tax bill like many of my neighbors.
Our bill was a stunner.
The way the system here works is that earlier in the year we get a letter from the Cook County Assessor, Fritz Kaegi. It shows the estimated value of our house.
If you think it’s too high, you can appeal it to the three-member Board of Review.
Then you get a bill for the first payment amount. The first bill has nothing to do with your total bill. The second bill, which usually comes in the Fall, is not the other half. In fact, I had no clue as to what the second bill was going to be.
It was posted on the Assessor’s web site this week.
The posting was later than usual.
It is double what it was last year.
This is not the Assessor’s fault.
County Tax Assessor Fritz Kaegi was first elected to his job four years ago and re-elected last week. He ran as a reformer and defeated the Machine Boss, Joe Berrios.
Disclaimer. I supported Fritz. We even had him when he was a candidate on our radio show, Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, on Lumpen Radio.
Fritz isn’t to blame for my property taxes doubling.
That’s on the Board of Review and its three members.
Owners of big commercial properties often take advantage of this system. When they file appeals, the Board of Review often doesn’t just tweak their original assessments. For valuable commercial properties, it often slashes them.
For the Old Post Office Building at 433 W. Van Buren St., for example, the assessor calculated the market value at $871,031,166. According to the assessor, the Board of Review lowered it to $619,375,280, a reduction of 29%.
The assessor calculated the market value of the 1K Fulton building, 1000 W. Fulton St., at $197,271,980. The Board of Review reduced it to $161,794,884, or by 18%. For the hotel part of the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago, the Board of Review cut the assessment by 31%.
Was Kaegi’s office really that far off on its original assessments?
Big cuts like that for commercial properties mean owners of those commercial properties pay much less in taxes. Because local governmental taxing units are supposed to get the full amount of money they levy, no matter how assessments are doled out, lower tax bills on commercial properties mean other property owners — often homeowners — have to pay more.
So, neighborhood homeowners are paying lots more while Trump got a 30% tax cut.
The entire system of reliance on property taxes is regressive and favors the rich.
And for working class and seniors who have lived in their homes for decades but find themselves surrounded by gentrification, it is particularly punitive.
In Cook County, there are two discounts offered to seniors. One is for low-income seniors and another is a standard discount on the assessment. But on a tax bill that can run thousands of dollars, the discount aint’ much.
Huge tax bills on long-time homeowners and seniors just drive gentrification. It forces folks like us out of or homes to be sold or torn down and replaced by million dollar boxes.
A million + dollar box replaces a Logan Square tear-down.
It is an unfair and broken property tax system.
The broken tax system extends state-wide. Illinois still has a flat income tax rate in which the richest folks and working class folks pay the same tax rate.
An attempt to constitutionally change the flat tax to a progressive tax was defeated two years ago. The opposition was bank-rolled by billionaires like hedge funder Ken Griffen.
Once the amendment was defeated, Griffen moved out of state anyway.
To start fixing it there should be legislation capping property taxes on long-time homeowners and seniors who live in gentrifying areas.
And make the rich pay their share.