By: Diane Benjamin
If you own a house you are renting it from all those taxing bodies on your bill. If you don’t pay the bill it will be stolen from you.
Scams abound this time of year because all of them are raising your taxes.
More than once I’ve heard “the owner of a $200,000 home will actually pay slightly less because the rate decreased”. The scam is that $200,000 house is not assessed the same this year as last year! Even if the tax rate is slightly lower, the assessed value ISN’T.
Example from District 87: PDF page 16 https://district87.diligent.community/document/571f263f-fc18-4590-92ba-945044982658/
The chart assumes the home value stayed the same for 2024 and 2025. In reality, it might have increased 9.5%. That means it’s assessed at $273,750 in 2025, not $250,000. Property Taxes will not go down and you are paying 1% more in Sales Taxes because people were conned into believing property taxes would go down if they voted for it.
Unit 5 is pretending to lower the increase they would have required without the new 1% Sales Tax. Expect higher property tax bills next year anyway.
Property Taxes are a scam and why people leave Illinois. They are theft. The scam will continues until everybody rents their property because they can’t afford to buy. Huge corporations will gladly buy up properties and rent them forever. They already are.
Meanwhile, the Florida governor is making plans to eliminate property taxes for individuals. He knows they are theft. The Illinois ruling class won’t admit it. Voters prove every election they are gullible pawns.
Correct on every point on this topic. Unfortunately both parties(politicians in the ruling class gain and profit from the system in the name of leadership strategy and planning. While citizens and taxpayers, local employees/retirees and data exploited using the same systems they implemented. Unit 5 and other districts a huge culprit in it all.
Til folks start seriously questioning or leave in masses nothing will change.
Keep up the good work.
The entire property tax system in Illinois is complicated and unfair by design. However, nothing will change until taxpayers get engaged in the process and demand change.
Not going to happen
RR said it best. “A government big enough to give you everything you want is also a government big enough to take everything you have”.
in the 2010s, the Bloomington Normal school districts somehow got by with almost no changes in home property tax rate or levies, with less teachers, and more students (and higher test scores). But as soon as the housing market ripped in the 2020s, the districts have taken every penny of that 40% increase in home appreciation, jacking up the levy every year, hiring more teachers, but student enrollment has dropped by 8% in Unit 5 and almost 20% in District 87, meanwhile test scores are worse than the 2010s.
It’s all about ego, power, and money. The more teachers, the more building projects, the more big ideas they can throw money at, the better the school boards and superintendents feel about themselves. But outcomes are worse, costs are soaring, and the kids are not in the seats. God forbid the housing market corrects locally (it already is nationally, average year over year price will be down 1-2% in december). The districts will have all these bloated budgets, half empty classrooms, and a ton of admin and teachers will get axed.
With all of the lawyers in practice you would have thought someone would come up with a way to sue the assessor and win the case to open the door to more cases.
I don’t see how an assessor can say some home value has increased without any credible proof. For example ranch style homes are in demand raising their value. Whereas a McMansion home isn’t in demand and has less value.
State of Illinois raised local assessments because they thought local properties were under assessed
Are property taxes in our state constitution?
Don’t know, look it up. Illinois can’t stop spending money so even if it isn’t they won’t care
In 20 years my home valuation (with no improvements) has increased 400% while my SS has increased 2.5% a year