Cook county treasurer website shows debt on individual properties by Judi Strauss-Lipkin
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PIN 19-15-318-032-0000
Total Debt: $111,737
In addition, the Cook County Treasurer’s website has been redesigned and updated to include information for you from the Debt Disclosure Ordinance enacted by the Cook County Board in 2009. Each taxing district of local government (such as the Water Reclamation District, the Park District, the Board of Education, the City of Chicago among others) is required to provide the Treasurer with audited financial statements, including all outstanding debts. The Treasurer’s Office then does an analysis of this debt-toproperty-value, and posts the results in percentage terms. You can find the total debt percentage attributed to your property value by putting in your parcel number on the website. Why is this important? In areas with low debt-to-property-value percentages, smaller real estate tax increases can cover the debt burden. In cities and villages with high debt-to-value ratios (unless there are many commercial property owners - where they pay at least 2½ times as much as homeowners), the property taxes increase substantially each year. This page on the website also can show you the financial condition of your local government, including the debt burden of the schools, the county, and your municipality; and the increases in your property taxes over the last 20 years. One excellent example from the website: a $1.3 million-dollar Water Tower Place condominium has a debt ratio of 41.5 percent. So does a small, $269,550 house near Midway Airport. Thus, the taxes for the first property could rise at the same percentage rate as the substantially less-valued second property. The big picture, according to the Debt Disclosure data from 2016 to 2021, is that the debt of all local government agencies in Cook County rose 16.6 percent to $153.4 billion, while the Consumer Price Index grew only 8 percent.
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Yes, property taxes have gone up and are still going up, even during COVID, to cover the increasing debt -- including the projected $733 million shortfall for the City of Chicago’s 2022 budget. However, some taxpayers can more easily cover this increasing tax burden because they have more sources of income. The average wage growth since the 1970s is about 4 percent annually; the minimum wage in Chicago rose to $15 an hour on July 1. However, many taxpayers who live in more affluent city neighborhoods do not count on wages to cover their real estate tax burden - the S & P 500 stock index finished 2020 up more than 16 percent. The tech-heavy NASDAQ gained 43.6 percent to record levels, allowing many to pay their real estate tax bill from investment earnings, a luxury not possible for wage earners who have little or no savings or investments. Finally, the city’s 2021 $12.8 billion spending plan hiked property taxes by $93 million and authorized the city to hike them each year based on an increase in the cost of living, (generating about $20 million in 2022). Next year’s budget should not likely require an additional property tax hike to balance, according to Mayor Lightfoot. However, the inequities due to prior years’ taxes remain. Judi Strauss-Lipkin, PhD, owns Strauss Tax Service in Chicago. She is an enrolled agent and was a professor of management at Benedictine University and George Williams College. She was president of the Phi Beta Kappa Association of Chicago and treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Chicago.
excerpt from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas Debit Report.
FROM THE STREETS
Usually, the second installment of your real estate taxes for Chicago and Cook County shows up in your mailbox and online (www. cookcountytreasurer.com) in July and is due August. But this year, partially due to COVID and mostly due to the controversy over questionable low-income senior citizen freeze exemptions, the deadline for paying the second installment has been moved to October. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said her office has now audited over 40,000 exemptions for senior citizens and recovered about $11 million that was inappropriately claimed.
Residential Property: Chicago
