Chicago Way to Beat Property Tax Hikes

Letter to Ephesians: I’m still laughing about “a $500 million shift in Chicago’s property tax burden to homeowners from downtown businesses” & how experts can’t figure out “how” City Hall did it without a rate hike. Easy. A BS assessment system.

If I may explain my reaction to the recent WSJ article. First, I can still recall my one-year stint 50 years ago as a law clerk for a Windy City real estate tax law firm while working my way through law school. One strange yet obvious thing that hit me was the firm’s miraculous 100% success rate in challenging clients’ tax bills that are based not only on a legislated “rate” but on the every-three-year reassessment supposedly researched & decided by supposedly real estate value experts. The WSJ piece quoted angry residents about suddenly finding their sh*tty ghetto homes assessed at Donald Trump prices, sometimes representing over a “133%” hike, while Donald Trump’s hotel downtown got an assessment break. Bitched one sympathetic Chamber of Commerce exec: “You got vacant lots, you got boarded up homes, you got places in need of repair. There’s no new construction. Where are these numbers coming from?”

Of course, the Democratic Machine’s assessor’s office gave a great talking point explanation of how hard his team of assessors work to fairly assess forever changing real estate values and a realistic “Dems da apples” conclusion. Perhaps more revealing was the WSJ’s also noticing, “But then the Board of Review started hearing appeals from [ed: politically connected] business & homeowners” filed by politically connected law firms. “When they finished … major downtown landholders had successfully argued for big breaks …” Further reading between the lines, we learned that the perennially near-bankrupt city’s mayor & Democratic alderman are once again desperately trying to find money to keep the Party’s political favors spigot open. All those heads turning toward the Board of Appeals were no coincidence.

Davd Soul