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Homeowners in for surprise, assessor warns

Cook County assessor rips into Board of Review over property taxes

Cook County plans to post new property tax bills Tuesday morning.

Cook County plans to post new property tax bills Tuesday morning.

The assessor warns many of the 1.8 million bills will be flat or higher, when he says they should lower for homeowners.

A day before real estate tax bills are to be released online, Cook County’s assessor blasted the county’s Board of Review, an obscure agency that Fritz Kaegi says has cut tax valuations for the county’s biggest property owners by half-a-billion dollars.

The biggest losers, he says? homeowners.

“We worked hard to shift the burden off of homeowners the last several years. And, this year, homeowners were in line to have about six percentage points less of the burden,” Kaegi said.

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Kaegi issued a chart showing his assessor’s office had the total homeowners’ share of property taxes to 46.2 percent vs. 53.8 percent for businesses. He says the board of review reversed that, so homeowners are now paying 52.8 percent of all real estate taxes; 47.2 percent for businesses.

“So that half-billion dollars that would have been sticking in the neighborhoods, staying with homeowners is instead being transferred to those big building owners, a lot of whom are from out of town and a lot of whom are foreigners,” Kaegi said.

Many owners of large retail and commercial buildings complained to the board of review that the pandemic had clobbered them. One study found that as of August, fewer than half of downtown Chicago’s pre-pandemic office workers had returned, with some tenants canceling leases and moving to smaller spaces.

“We baked all that into our assessments,” Kaegi said.

Bills will be posted online as early as Tuesday and mailed by Dec. 1.

Taxpayers will be able to download their bill to print and mail their payment in.

Bills are due by Dec. 30

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