Appeals system raised property tax bills for Cook County homeowners, report says

Chicago Tribune

05-05-2025

Cook County's property tax appeal process shifted $1.91 billion in taxes from businesses onto homeowners over the last three years, exacerbating inequities in the city and suburbs, a new report found.
Homeowners' bills grew by a total of about 7% over that span as a result of the shift, according to the latest report from the Cook County treasurer's office, the first to calculate how much shifting burdens have cost on property tax bills. Those increases fell more on lower-income Black and Latino taxpayers, the report found.
The report does not draw conclusions about whether those appeals were correct, but does show 'that the county's assessment appeal system works far more to the advantage of business property owners than homeowners, and at the same time favors wealthier white homeowners over lower-income minority homeowners.'
It looked at the impact of appeals at the county assessor's office and the three-member Board of Review during the 2021 and 2023 tax years. Though those years corresponded with much of the pandemic, its conclusions echoed similar findings from a Chicago Tribune and ProPublica investigation in 2017 about appeals' impact on assessments.
Properties are reassessed every three years. Every year, owners have two chances to knock down their assessments via appeals before the value is finalized: once at the assessor, next at the Board of Review. If they're dissatisfied with those results, they can take their case to the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board or to circuit court.
Owners of businesses have historically been far more likely to appeal. In the span of the study, nearly 64% of commercial building owners appealed, representing more than $100 billion in value. More than 46% of all businesses were 'serial' filers, appealing every year, according to the report.
Business appeals 'were particularly successful' in the period of the study, the report found, lowering 'their taxes through appeals by a total of 12.5%,' or about $3.3 billion.
Owners that didn't appeal wound up paying for it: Any reduction in assessed value for one property owner shifts the burden onto others. Successful appeals for valuable commercial buildings have a much bigger impact and shift millions in tax burden onto homeowners and other businesses.
While overall 27% of homeowners appealed, the study found 'wide variations' in which homeowners filed their own appeals. Just 3.4% of homeowners in West Englewood, a majority-Black and low-income neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, disputed their assessment during 2021 city cycle, while nearly all Loop homeowners — 96% — did so. That could be because assessments dropped in Englewood and went up in the Loop that year as Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi rejiggered the office's methodology.
In the suburbs, just 22% of south suburban homeowners appealed during that reassessment year, compared with 60% of those in the north suburbs. Homeowners and businesses in lower-income areas were 'hit the hardest,' the study found.
'Homeowners in those neighborhoods were less likely to appeal, less likely to win and, when they did win, received lower overall dollar reductions in their homes' assessed values,' the report said. Appeals led to bills increasing by about 5% for homeowners 'in high-income areas and about 10% in low-income areas, most of which had predominantly minority populations.'
The assessor's office said a major reason for appeal rate disparities by neighborhood could be that median bills in wealthier neighborhoods are much higher.
In some Chicago neighborhoods, the treasurer highlighted particularly sharp hikes where residents could least afford it. The South Deering neighborhood, which is majority Black and has a median household income below $35,000, saw overall tax bills go up 24.3% following appeals during the 2021 Chicago cycle. So did the majority-Latino Gage Park neighborhood, where median household income is about $50,000. It saw bills go up by 23% that year after appeals.
But while all property owners have the right to appeal, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said the answer isn't necessarily for everyone to do so. Rather, the assessor's office and Board of Review need to get on the same page about their data and methodologies so owners trust the assessments in the first place and so reductions for businesses aren't as dramatic, she said.
Both offices pledged to do just that in December, after a county report concluded decades of communication failures had helped fuel gaps in how each office approached assessments. That study, commissioned by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, found suburban businesses were assessed too low compared with their actual sale prices and that appeals to the Board of Review made assessments less accurate. It also found Kaegi initially assessed Chicago commercial properties too high in 2021.
But the political reality of reaching consensus is thorny. Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele and two board employees with ties to Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr. are running to replace Kaegi in the March primary. Steele and Rogers, meanwhile, are also rivals.
'These two offices are in a war zone, and if they don't stop their war zone, this is going to go on,' Pappas said. 'Can we get to the middle to get to a solution that doesn't hurt people?'
Assessments for commercial buildings have been a hot button issue since Kaegi took office. The previous Tribune investigation found high-end downtown businesses had been under-assessed. For thousands of those properties, the investigation found, their assessment did not change 'even by a single dollar,' while for others, their assessments were 'so riddled with errors that they created deep inequities.'
Kaegi pledged to fix those issues. The first commercial assessments he mailed were 82.5% higher in the north suburbs in 2019, 55.6% higher in the south suburbs the following year, and up 76.5% in Chicago in 2021. Business owners, believing Kaegi overcorrected, filed appeals, and the county's Board of Review, which disagreed with Kaegi's methodology, often granted reductions.
Kaegi's office, in a statement, said the latest report backs up its long-held contention that 'outsized reductions' granted by the Board of Review to big commercial appellants are what is driving the shift.
'By comparison, the tax bill changes due to differences in residential appeal rates are relatively minor. We don't believe the problem of property tax unfairness is solved by pitting homeowners against each other, distracting us from the much more consequential inequities at play,' the statement continued, noting that independent analyses found Kaegi's assessments are more accurate than past years.
Rogers, the chairman of the three-member Board of Review, said the assessor's 'flawed valuations' are to blame. 'The buck starts and stops with Fritz Kaegi.'
Pappas' study suggests if the two offices standardized their data, they might grant smaller business breaks and reduce the massive shifts from the appeals process. The two previously promised to work together, and she said she hoped the report would help 'nudge' them to collaborate.
Until then, the report said low-income homeowners should also be given tools to help appeal their assessments. Kaegi's office, the statement said, participated in more than 200 outreach events for homeowners to help with appeals and exemptions last year.