Difference in Value of Homestead Exemption in Cook County and Elsewhere – Updated

From NBC News:

According to NBC 5 Investigates, [Lightfoot’s City Attorney Mark] Flessner saved approximately $2,600 on his South Loop condo by using the exemption, and also received $1,600 on his Naperville house. 

And remember, homes in Cook County are assessed at a much lower percentage of market value than elsewhere in Illinois.

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Found this information in a Taxpayers Federation of Illinois piece by Mike Klemens:

Homestead Exemptions—tempting, but not actually helpful

Another popular program likely to be considered are increased homestead exemptions, which have the advantage of generally not costing the local government anything.  That’s because they don’t cut taxes; they just shift the burden from homesteads onto non-homestead properties.

Homestead exemptions – reductions in the amount of taxable value taken before the tax rate is applied – have proliferated in Illinois, and today there are ten separate homestead exemptions. 

The largest are: the General Homestead Exemption,

  • a $10,000 EAV reduction in Cook and
  • $6,000 in other counties;

[Note that assessments on Cook County homes are significantly lower than those elsewhere in Illinois. How did our legislators allow such a larger tax break for homeowners in Cook County than for their own constituents? The answer may be that outside of Cook legislators were more responsive to local governments than taxpayers. That is what happened with the Property Tax Cap, which took effect for the next tax year in the collar counties, while other “Downstate” counties were spared what is called PTELL until residents passed a referendum.]

Taxpayer crushed by property tax burden

the Senior Citizen Homestead Exemption,

  • an $8,000 reduction in Cook County and
  • $5,000 elsewhere;

[Same type of question as above.]

and the Senior Citizen Assessment Freeze Homestead Exemption. 

Homestead exemptions accounted for 5% of gross Cook County EAV in 1999, and grew to 9.25% by 2017.

[Note that the percentage is not provided for the non-Cook County part of Illinois.]

A 2010 report by the Civic Federation titled “Recommendations for Reform of the Cook County Property Tax System” stated that exemptions were undermining the tie between property value and property tax, and that it was time to curtail them and move toward a “truly ad valorem tax.”


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