Mine went down $240

If you know your PIN you can find your bill here.

Fish, how is that possible? The cost of one of your gutters dwarfs your 240 decrease......IMJ's taxes up 600.00, what a joke....

Milton assessor can kiss my 19th hole, see pic at left......

Taxes up $450. I can't wait to see the breakdown to figure out who's getting more of my money this year.

Mine went up $137.36. Would have been nice to see a decrease....

I guess I should consider myself lucky ours only went up ~ $50.

Someone want to explain to me again how our taxes go up in a time of apparently declining real estate values?

quote:

Originally posted by Dinsdale:
I guess I should consider myself lucky ours only went up ~ $50.

Someone want to explain to me again how our taxes go up in a time of apparently declining real estate values?

The re-assessment period also included a few years of the "hot" market.

mine are up $1100. (17% increase in assessed value, 13% increase in payment.) i filed a protest with the state of illinois last week...probably a big waste of time. geeze!

quote:

Originally posted by Fish:
The re-assessment period also included a few years of the "hot" market.

Thanks.

Up $675...I pity the next GE bum that asks me for money.

quote:

Originally posted by Fish:
If you know your PIN you can find your bill here.

And if you know your neighbor's address,
you can look up their PIN here.

Well, it could be worse. Ours is up $1,400, but that's because we lost a temporary reduction for the extensive remodel the past owners did on the house.

I was actually expecting it to be a bigger jump.

Mamattorney Wins!!!!!!!!! There can't be a bigger jump than that....

Up only $8...I consider us lucky!

We've made no recent improvements to our house. Does anyone understand how this system works? I would think that everyone's assessment would rise or fall a certain percentage depending on property values and improvements would further increase the assessment. Am I missing something?

quote:

Does anyone understand how this system works?

Very, very few. And the ones that do don't want YOU to understand how it works.

I call it the Property Tax Combine. It is the Wheel of Pain.

o Assessors in Townships
o County "Supervisor of Assessments"
o A Plethora of Pocket Picking Tax entities who each set their own "Tax Rates"
o No one place to get questions answered

Ask the Assessor the wrong question and she'll quickly shoot back: "You'll have to take that issue up with your local __________ [town, school district, etc.]"

So you slog over to the local town, school district, etc. and ask the question and sure enough, you'll get: "Beyond the scope of what we do - you'll need to run that by the assessor. Sorry."

Don't even bother asking DuPage County anything as all they seem to do is send out the bills and collect the money. Oh, and "supervise" the assessments.

No, all of the machinations and number-crunching and SWAGs [silly wild *** guesses] are dropped into the Property Tax Combine hopper. The old thing just sputters and wheezes and steams and then - AMAZINGLY - just starts shooting out property tax bills!

All neatly prepared by the elves.

No input from the serf who owns the property being taxed. Nope, you'd never even begin to comprehend the magical mystery tour that goes on behind the curtain to produce that pretty little bill.

I have been tracking how much money I pay into stranger's "pension funds" for the last six or seven years. You know, the DuPage County Forest Preserve pension fund and the County Health Department pension fund and on and on and on and on and on and on....

Man, I'm one generous son-of-a-buck! Nearly $600 of my annual property taxes are going to pay for old Uncle Charlies' 1950s-vintage defined benefit pension plan!

I checked and no one from the County Health Department or the "township road department" is kicking in any money to my 401K. Geez, you'd expect a bit of reciprocaty, no?

The whole Property Tax Combine is complex, Byzantine, spread all over the place, hidden from view and keeps many, many aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews gainfully employed. Heck, it takes them all year to produce that annual bill, ya know!

Whadda ya want for $9,000 or $10,000 a year? An explanation or something?

quote:

Originally posted by ByTheNumbers:

quote:

Does anyone understand how this system works?

Whadda ya want for $9,000 or $10,000 a year? An explanation or something?

Well, I don't understand it anymore now than I did an hour ago, but I got quite a chuckle out of your explanation, so THANK YOU!

Up $513.

Holly Crap! Up again $2365.00 I wish my realtor was this optimistic!

I don't know who's worse, the panhandlers or the county.

quote:

Originally posted by Fish:
Mine went down $240

If you know your PIN you can find your bill here.

mine went down, mine went down. . . La de Da Fish!

OK, a bit more serious explanation [much of which is surmised and guessed at].

Every year, the township assessor affixes an Assessors Value for each and every PIN [Parcel Identification Number] within the walls of his realm. Think of this as the Top Line value, or "Gross" assessment.

A HUGE question is: Just how do they do this? They surely don't come out to each and every property each and every year and do a formal appraisal, as would be done if a mortgage was going to be made on a property. No, they have their Magic Spreadsheets and odd equations and techniques that they can whip out in special cases - just ask Bitterboy about how Milton Township assesses his barony.

Ask me: "What about the State Equalizer? Or hey, how do they determine the County Equalizer value?"

I'll answer: "I have no frikkin' idea how these work!"

Maybe they just look at how much money will pour in [billions, county-wide] and say: "That ain't enough. We need to "equalize" that pile a bit. Here, try this "equalizer" value, Henry."

No clue how these parts of the Property Tax Combine are determined. You will note that on this year's tax bills there are NO State OR County equalizers, first time in a LONG time that this has happened. Is this the vaunted "property tax relief" we've been hearing about? Because make no mistake: The "Equalizers" work only one way - UP. They always INCREASE your Assesors value to the magical "Equalized Assessed Valuation".

It seems as if there is a "Generally Applicable Algorithm" that assessors use to come up with some percentage value [nearly always an INCREASE percentage value] that is then uniformly spread across all of the individual residential PINs. Special cases like improvements tracked by building permits and other things done to bolster a property's value also seem to be taken into account. There is a special exemption called the RIE [Real-Estate Improvement Exemption] that defers the increased assessed value for four years [I think].

Anyway, in most years, most properties are not SOLD nor are they improved in such a MAJOR WAY that you'd need an RIE exemption and these non-sold, non-improved properties [the vast majority] need some sort of number voodoo done on their value.

Further confounding the whole issue is the fact that assessments for a year come out in mid-October of the year. For example, 2007's Notice of General Assessments were mailed on or about 10/16/2007. What about the last half of October, November and December? Aren't they part of the calendar year?

Not in Assessor World. I suspect that the assessor uses a June-to-June fiscal year [say, June of 2006 to June of 2007] but just calls it 2007's Assessor's Value.

Close enough for government work, ya know.

Ok, so everyone knows what their "Assessor's Value" is right after the end of the 3rd Quarter of a calendar year. With me so far?

So, when do you find out the impact of your assessment? Why, on May 1st of the following year, of course!

The taxing districts need all that time [I guess] to come up with the correct "tax rate" to stay in line with the PTELL Law [tax cap], apply any referendum scams and I would imagine, do some midnight number wrasslin' to make sure that even with a LOWER TAX RATE, they will still get MORE MONEY [due to the "generous" assessment increases].

Oh and post all the public hearing notices in fine legalese print in the the classified sections of tiny circulation newspapers.

So, for roughly 7 1/2 months, property owners are left holding their Notice of General Assessment and scratching their heads wondering how deep the corncob will be plunged come 5/1.


And then, when the bill comes? You have only one month to pay the first half! Shoot, they had 7 1/2 months to cobble the thing together and we get a whole month.