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Two-year property tax freeze criticized

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Illinois

* From the Illinois Policy Institute’s news network…

Illinois lawmakers this week could get a chance to freeze some of Illinois’ high property taxes, but a freeze won’t bring down the already high burden in some areas.

Illinois has the second highest property tax burden in the country behind New Jersey. There have been proposals over the years for a permanent freeze, a four-year freeze, a freeze with required referenda to increase or decrease property taxes and more, but none have been successful.

A House committee last week approved an amendment to Senate Bill 851 that would bring about a two-year property tax freeze for Cook and a handful of collar counties and allow for the rest of the state to freeze property taxes through voter referendum. […]

Americans for Prosperity Illinois State Director Andrew Nelms said a freeze doesn’t lessen the already high burden.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Nelms said, “to go from a permanent, to a four-year, to a two-year, never mind the fact that they continue to water it down with these exemptions.”

Mussman’s amendment would still allow local governments to increase property taxes for debt service and pension payments. It would also exempt several dozen school districts that are on a financial watch list, including Chicago Public Schools, from having their property taxes frozen.

The bill could be approved in the House and concurred in the Senate when lawmakers return for veto session this week.

Voting against a two-year property tax freeze, even with these exemptions, would probably be difficult to explain to the folks back home.

* They also left out one component…

Additionally, the measure would provide relief to taxpayers by increasing senior-specific exemptions, as well as exemptions for every other homeowner..

The bill is here.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 11:48 am

Comments

This is such easy politics and such bad policy.

Comment by Anonish Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 11:59 am
Anyone know if this a re-write of SB 484?

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=484&GAID=14&GA=100&DocTypeID=SB&LegID=100425&SessionID=91

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:01 pm
Perfidy tastes bitter doesn’t it IPI?

Comment by Honeybear Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:03 pm
It’s not hard to explain. It’s a “phony” freeze (to use a Raunerism.)

Pensions, schools, debt. These are the main drivers of local government spending, and therefore taxes.

If you exempt them, there’s no real relief and no long term change to the spending patterns. Money is fungible.

You need to force local governments to prioritize. If you freeze their funding and they know they still need to pay for pensions, schools, and debt, they’ll be forced to cut from just about everything else. That’s the point.

This bill isn’t so much a property tax freeze as it is a property tax delay that will make things worse in the long run.

Comment by Political Animal Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:05 pm
What matters is not the exemption, what matters is the levy. If you increase the exemptions for every homeowner by X, that means their share of the levy goes down to be picked up by those who don’t get that exemption.

Businesses, but more importantly for our discussion here, RENTERS. It isn’t like landlords are going to eat the property tax increase they pay, they’ll pass it down in the form of higher rents.

Comment by John Bambenek Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:17 pm
Honeybear, I don’t think the IPI likes it.

Comment by Honeybadger Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:18 pm
Wow political animal, you just don’t care whose life you destroy or put in jeopardy.
Your squeeze the beast ideology
Causes immense suffering
Jobs lost
Programs cut
Seniors hungry
Shelters close
Help or aid denied
All for that sick ideology
And you suggesting
That’s the point
Malignant callousness
Born of privilege
In service of profit
So tell me what it’s like
To worship
And serve
Mammon?

Comment by Honeybear Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:19 pm
This is what is the problem with Rauner and his supporters. They won’t accept any compromise. To the super-rich and privileged, who make up a good deal of Rauner’s support, it’s nothing to them to bust the state apart if they don’t get their way. They couldn’t care less that a compromise in Democratic-controlled Illinois is the best they can do.

So the Rauner side has nothing to show for the long budget fight—nothing but destruction. Again, it doesn’t matter to them because they’re not the ones who lost social services and had higher ed cut.

Also, it’s local governments’ responisbility to deal with property taxes. Rauner wants to put big state government into local government policies.

Comment by Grandson of Man Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:21 pm
Bad legislation like this encourage local taxing bodies to maximize their levies in anticipation of a possible freeze. Bad policy.

The biggest taxing body in most areas is the school district. Is the state paying its fair share there?

Comment by logic not emotion Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:25 pm
The reason Illinois has such high property taxes is that we have too many taxing bodies. When we lived in northern Virginia, we paid property taxes to one entity, the County. Our house was worth about the same as the one we purchased in DuPage, but our property taxes were half what we paid here. Now, two decades later, the house there is worth more than the house here, but the property taxes are still half what we pay here. And the services were better — schools, social services, everything. There was one school district in the County. One library system. One police department, fire department, etc. Sales tax was lower. State income tax was a little higher, but progressive. All in all, a better governed state. I don’t know how to get from where we are to such a more efficient system, but it could sure be less expensive.

Comment by Depressed in DuPage Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:28 pm
Bad policy……good politics

Comment by DuPage Bard Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:43 pm
I’m always quite surprised that whenever the issue of property taxes comes up, everyone on here seems to defend the need for high property taxes and calls any property tax freeze ‘bad policy.’ Are you all renters? I have to overwhelmingly agree with Depressed in DuPage — of course we need property taxes for local services, but we’re not getting a good deal for our money. I’m 28 and most of my friends from high school have left the state for better opportunities elsewhere. I’m beginning to look at houses myself and am astounded by the annual property tax bills for relatively affordable condos in Chicago, not to mention higher-tax suburbs. I lived in San Francisco for 4 years and houses worth twice as much there had lower property tax bills. This is absolutely one of the main drivers of the exodus from our state, but all I see from the Democratic party are apologists for this system. Rather than bash anything Rauner proposes, maybe the Democrats (of which I begrudgingly count myself) need to actually address what’s ailing the middle class. California froze property tax rates and correspondingly raised their progressive income taxes to make up for the shortfall. This would be a far less regressive method for funding education, etc.

Comment by mtwtsn Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:54 pm
=You need to force local governments to prioritize. If you freeze their funding and they know they still need to pay for pensions, schools, and debt, they’ll be forced to cut from just about everything else. That’s the point.=

That’s the point? Really? they never say that, they say the point is to save “taxpayers” from the now second highest (before it was the highest) property taxes.

Shifting narrative aside- the effect (not the point) is that local governments will have to start cutting. That is going to hurt the economy and continue the trend of stagnant wages. It won’t help businesses and will not increase the wages of non-governmental employees.

The IPI and AFP do not care about you or your kids. They couldn’t give a hoot about education or infrastructure or jobs as they have yet to advocate for anything that will positively impact any of those items,

Maybe it is the point, but that is not what they are saying. And it does nothing to help the average person. See Kansas and Kentucky.

Comment by JS Mill Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:58 pm
=== Bad legislation like this encourage local taxing bodies to maximize their levies in anticipation of a possible freeze. ===

Yes — these local governments start freaking out over freezes and begin maxing-out their levies.

Comment by Just Observing Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:59 pm
Ideologues make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Comment by anon2 Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:05 pm
Something that will make Illinois competitive nationally is to completely remove the school levies from the over-taxed Illinois property owners.

The school levy on my tax bill is 65% of the total.

All this other talk about freezes, with all kinds of caveat carve outs, is just more standard bad government, of which Illinois is infamous.

Comment by cdog Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:11 pm
By definition, a “freeze” (or partial freeze) does not reduce taxes. It prevents them from increasing as fast. Consequently, it’s knocking down a straw man to criticize a freeze for not rolling back property taxes.

Comment by anon2 Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:14 pm
What happens if the straw man is eating a red herring? /s

If the objective is to relieve the problem of Illinois’ high property taxes, then all discussions about freezes, reductions, and removals of taxing body levies is relevant.

It is well documented that the school levies are the biggest problem. It is also well documented that the State hasn’t figured out how to follow its own constitution regarding education funding.

Freezing property taxes is a sideshow to what the real discussion should be which is a different revenue source for k-12 that relies less on abused property owners.

Comment by cdog Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:37 pm
My property tax bill in Du Page County this year were just over $10,000. About 70 percent of it went to schools, elementary, high school and community college districts. About 10 percent went to the County and County Forest Preserve District, 10 percent to the fire district, 5 percent to the township and 5 percent to the municipality.

If the state wants to do something about high property taxes, it has to take a serious look at how we fund public education.

Comment by GA Watcher Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:45 pm
Honeybear,

That rambling pseudo-poem was admittedly hard for me to follow, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with my comment.

The high property taxes are what’s hurting people. High property taxes make it harder for working families to get buy. Make it harder for businesses to operate in Illinois. Make it harder for those businesses to employee people and sell their goods at low prices.

High property taxes in Illinois do not serve to fund needed services. High property taxes in Illinois go towards overlapping and unneeded government bodies. They go towards funding nepotism and patronage, since so many local officials seem to run primarily to offer jobs to their friends and family, jobs that don’t add an announce of value to the tax payer. They go towards funding outrageous union benefits, which again, don’t add an ounce of value to the tax payer.

So yes, the point of a property tax freeze is to root out the unneeded spending and kill it. Debt service and education are things we should be paying for. So force the Governments to prioritize those line items by making it impossible to pay for all the rest.

Loosen laws on bargaining and consolidation so it’s easier for the handful of good local government officials to cut costs the right way.

Comment by Political Animal Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:47 pm
===Political Animal - Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 12:05 pm:
It’s not hard to explain. It’s a “phony” freeze (to use a Raunerism.)
Pensions, schools, debt. These are the main drivers of local government spending, and therefore taxes.
If you exempt them, there’s no real relief and no long term change to the spending patterns.===

Totally true, but to make the change, there have to be options for other local revenues in statute and/or more of a shift to local funding through increased income tax. Problem is, the State is taking more local share of the income tax while still leaving locals to pay for pension costs set by the State.

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:48 pm
Instead of a freeze, someone needs to introduce a tax swap plan: increased income tax for a dollar for dollar reduction / elimination of the school district tax levy. Model it more or less after the income tax / personal property tax swap in 1970.

It won’t be any easy sell, but having the State take over primary up to full funding of the local school districts is the only realistic way to reduce local property taxes.

Comment by RNUG Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 1:53 pm
==someone needs to introduce a tax swap plan: increased income tax for a dollar for dollar reduction / elimination of the school district tax levy.==

Good idea in theory, but when certain types of income are excluded from taxation (retirement), the benefits of such a swap are weighed heavily towards certain groups (retirees) against others (households with 2 working adults).

Comment by City Zen Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 2:16 pm
PA @ 1:47 pm:

You want lower taxes, show your math and name names. I’ll give you a couple; Leslie Munger (and other hires from December) and Beth Purvis.

I’d rather you do that than shortchange Higher Ed (and local gov’t) under the guise of a freeze and say “See, I knew you were overcharging us.”

Comment by Jocko Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 2:24 pm
- City Zen -

It might he an outlier, but that would not be without precedent. I can name at least one other State that excludes retirees from income tax and, in certain counties, also excludes senior citizens from their school property tax.

Comment by RNUG Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 2:39 pm
=Instead of a freeze, someone needs to introduce a tax swap plan: increased income tax for a dollar for dollar reduction / elimination of the school district tax levy.=

Martire had a plan that made it to a bill that died as a shell bill back in 2004. Had the plan been adopted we would have been in much better condition and the structural debt would be in the process of being eliminated. His plan involved sales tax and taxing retirement income over $75,000.

His plan didn’t have anything for politicians except a solution to our fiscal problems. I guess solutions are not politically expedient.

Comment by JS Mill Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 2:41 pm
Jocko, you are horribly confused about what property taxes pay for. They don’t pay for State employees at all and the majority of Higher Ed. Start over.

I like RNUG’s idea. As a retiree, of course I would. Sorry, CZ.

Comment by Arthur Andersen Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 2:48 pm
-AA-

You and I both know there will eventually be some level of taxation on retirement income. To me, the only question is how the State manages a partial income exemption with the flat tax provision in the State Constitution. Right now, I’m guessing they might go with a per person exemption of either the average SS payment for Illinois ($16,142) or the average State teacher’s pension (about $32,000). Or you could just exempt all SS and, for those like teachers who don’t get SS, let them exclude the average SS amount from taxation.

The State may have to go to a progressive income tax first in order to provide those levels of exclusion via a deduction or tax credit.

Comment by RNUG Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 6:53 pm
“Loosen laws on bargaining”

No. Bruce Rauner made $279 million during his first two years as governor. Start demanding sacrifices first from those who can afford it most.

Comment by Grandson of Man Monday, Nov 6, 17 @ 7:42 pm
RNUG
” someone needs to introduce a tax swap plan”

I’ve been emailing my Reps for years about doing this.

Comment by Person 8 Tuesday, Nov 7, 17 @ 10:30 am