What Cook County is not telling you

Property owners beware, it is an election year in Cook County and straight answers are getting as hard to come by as a sunny day in February . Many residents in Cook County received letters from the Cook County Assessor saying in effect that they had reduced the assessed value of their property. While we at www.DIYPropertyTaxAppeal.com applaud Cook County’s pro active reaction to the economic downturn, the devil is in the details.

What Cook County did not announce was that they had reduced the level of assessment, which is to say the percentage of market value the assessment now represents. Last tax year, the level of assessment was at 16% of market value. This year it is at 10% of market value. Initially this may sound like a decrease, but it is a dramatic increase in the property owners tax burden. The best way to illustrate this is with the following abbreviated tax formula.

Let’s say the assessor reduced this home owners assessed value by 10%.

2008 formula:

50,000 assessed value assessed at 16% equals fair market value of 312,500

2009 formula

45,000 assessed value assessed at 10% equals fair market value of 450,000

In this example, what the assessor had originally touted as a tax break (10% reduction in assessment) actually resulted in a 44% increase in fair market value. That is some tricky math. Bottom line is property taxes are going up. A lot.

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