Providing Property Tax Relief Since 1999
The Cook County Assessor’s Office has announced that assessment notices were mailed on August 16, 2016, for Thornton Township.
The deadline to file a 2016 property tax appeal at the Cook County Assessor’s Office is September 16, 2016.
The Cook County Assessor’s Office has announced that assessment notices were mailed on August 12, 2016, for West Township.
The deadline to file a 2016 property tax appeal at the Cook County Assessor’s Office is September 12, 2016.
Last month, the Kensington Research & Recovery team took a break from reducing property taxes for our Cook County homeowners to volunteer at the Inspiration Café in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.
This was our third year in a row and it was just as rewarding as in previous years.
The Inspiration Café is located at 4554 N. Broadway. Administered by the Inspiration Corporation, the café is one of many services offered to the homeless. The Café provides meals to its programs’ participants, treating them with dignity and respect, while they order from a menu and enjoy their meal in a clean, inviting setting.
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The deadline for Cook County homeowners to pay the second installment of their 2015 property taxes has now passed. Anyone who failed to meet the Aug. 1 deadline will need to pay a 1.5% interest penalty, assessed each month of the delinquency.
Worse: your tax liens can be sold to investors during the county treasurer’s annual tax sale, after you receive a formal written warning. The individuals and organizations that buy tax liens frequently receive high interest rates on the taxes that they buy—as much as 36% a year. If you don’t pay off the lien by the end of the redemption period, the tax buyer can acquire legal title to your property.
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The Cook County Board of Review has opened the 2016 appeal session for the first group of townships. The deadline to file a complaint is 8/30/16. Below are the townships that are currently open:
Besides Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $588 million property tax increase, approved by the Chicago City Council last fall for police and fire department pensions and school construction, Chicago homeowners will face an additional $250 million tax levy to pay for teacher pensions. This amount is $80 million more than Emanuel originally proposed for teacher pensions over a year ago.
As the Chicago Sun-Times reported, the hike is the result of a compromise deal between the Illinois Legislature and the City of Chicago, which didn’t receive as much money as it had hoped for from the State. A top mayoral aide quoted anonymously in the article said, “We didn’t get quite as much as we wanted from Springfield. The State is stepping up. They wanted to see the city step up.” As a result, Chicago homeowners will be paying up.
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The Cook County Assessor’s Office has announced that assessment notices were mailed on July 28, 2016, for Northfield Township.
The deadline to file a 2016 property tax appeal at the Cook County Assessor’s Office is August 29, 2016.
Northfield Township valuation statistics can be found here.
The Cook County Assessor’s Office has announced that assessment notices were mailed on July 22, 2016, for Orland Township.
The deadline to file a 2016 property tax appeal at the Cook County Assessor’s Office is August 22, 2016.
If you suspect that you’re paying too much in property taxes, consider this: Illinois has the highest median property tax rate in the United States, with various taxing agencies levying a combined rate of 2.67%, according to a nationwide analysis by CoreLogic, an Irvine-based research firm serving the global real estate and financial services industries.
The average median property tax rate across the country is 1.31%, which means that the owner of a home valued at $200,000 would pay annual property taxes totaling $2,620. In Illinois, however, a homeowner would pay $5,340 a year on a property of the same value. In Hawaii, which has the lowest median property tax rate at 0.31%, homeowners pay only $620 per year.
Only six other US states, all but one in the Northeast, have median property tax rates of more than 2%. As the Chicago Tribune points out, the states that border Illinois in the Midwest all have considerably lower property tax burdens: Indiana (0.88%), Missouri (1.26%), Iowa (1.69%) and Wisconsin (1.95%).
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The Cook County Assessor’s Office has announced that assessment notices were mailed for Jefferson and Proviso Townships.
The deadline to file a 2016 property tax appeal at the Cook County Assessor’s Office is August 15, 2016.
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