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* Tim Novak, Lauren FitzPatrick and Caroline Hurley at the Sun-Times…
The 3,300-square-foot condo in Water Tower Place isn’t on the ocean, like owners Barbara Kaplan Israel and Martin Israel’s place in Florida, but it does have jaw-dropping views of Lake Michigan.
They want to sell. Asking price: $3.3 million.
They’ve had the place for decades. Their property tax bill last year for their condo on the Magnificent Mile? Just $2,502.
The Israels — who pay $19,000 a year in property taxes on their oceanfront condo in Boca Raton, Florida — pay so little in Cook County property taxes thanks to a law the Illinois Legislature passed three decades ago establishing what’s called the “senior citizens assessment freeze homestead exemption” and problems with how the Cook County assessor’s office manages the program.
Legislators portrayed the senior freezes as a way to protect homeowners over 65 years old, many on fixed incomes, from being hit with big tax increases if, thanks to gentrification and booming development, home values and property taxes in their neighborhoods shot up, creating financial hardships for older residents.
In Cook County, though, officials admit the program is riddled with errors. And oversight is so lax that they don’t even try to verify that applicants meet the household income threshold of no more than $65,000 a year.
That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times investigation that found:
Go read the rest. Sheesh.
*** UPDATE *** Tribune…
Legislation headed to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk could set the stage for a wave of annual real estate tax increases across Illinois by giving local taxing bodies the ability to make up for refunds they’ve issued due to erroneous property over-assessments by shifting those costs onto the rest of their taxpayers.
In Cook County alone, refunds issued by local taxing bodies during the 2020 calendar year in categories covered by the legislation total $176.3 million — an amount roughly in line with annual refunds issued since 2015, based on statistics obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the county treasurer’s office. […]
The concept of the legislation is an attempt to hold local taxing districts harmless for drawing up their annual budgets, only to the see the amount of revenue they have available to spend through property taxes reduced by having to issue refunds due to erroneous over-assessments.
But Ralia and other critics contend it allows taxing districts to collect money that never truly existed because the assessments were erroneous and shift the burden onto the taxing district’s other taxpayers to make up for assessment mistakes.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:16 am
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Did they certify their income level each time they applied for the freeze? If so, they should be back charged.
Comment by Hippo Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:23 am
Boomer seniors got a pretty good deal in this country, often at the expense of everyone else
Comment by SWIL_Voter Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:26 am
Property taxes on the Mag Mile are a bargain compared to Union county.
Strange days indeed, most peculiar mama.
Comment by Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:26 am
I’ve lived and owned three different homes in Springfield since the early 1990s, and I have never had a property tax bill that low.
Last year, I paid about $8,000
When I hear people in Cook County complain about property taxes, it makes me insane.
Comment by SpiDem Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:27 am
Such collosal waste of tax dollars, which is a true injustice when the most in need are left behind. Cook County government needs an entire performance audit.
Comment by West Wing Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:30 am
Says a lot about the character of a person who pays $2500 in tax on a multimillion dollar home and thinks that’s ok. Government ineptitude is fun when it’s in your favor. If these same people thought they were paying too much you could hear the screaming and gnashing of teeth on the space station.
Comment by Captain Obvious Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:31 am
“Boomer seniors got a pretty good deal in this country”
While I agree with you 100% most I know think they are the only generation that’s ever turned a tap.
Comment by Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 10:44 am
I’m a Boomer. Bite me
Comment by Cheryl Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:15 am
“The Israels successfully argued to Berrios for a tax break, arguing that the condo was uninhabitable during renovations because their toilets had been removed.”
Toilets, eh?
Comment by City Zen Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:15 am
This legislation was supposed to actually protect the silent generation (passed 30 years ago). And it was supposed to help seniors on social security or pension style budgets. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that a couple who bought their Lincoln Park or Uptown or Rivernorth or … home way back when it was affordable should have to pony up huge amounts of extra taxes just because their neighborhoods changed around them.
So perhaps the eligibility rules need to be fixed and enforced.
Comment by cermak_rd Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:22 am
That$2,500 is the same amount of property tax that I pay on my less than $100,000 bungalow in Springfield.
Comment by Rachel Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:23 am
===Did they certify their income level each time they applied for the freeze? If so, they should be back charged. ===
This is a very fair question. It looks like they would have needed to apply for it annually but may not have been required to provide proof of income. Perhaps there should be an entire audit of the program and a claw back of the exemption for people that didn’t have income that qualified or wasn’t reasonably close enough to be an error. Since this is real property and is a lienable asset, it’s basically guaranteed payment from people who were conciously abusing an income based program intended to help seniors earning below 65,000 a year. That’s still ridiculous, though, because that’s above the median household income for the state.
===I’m a Boomer. Bite me ===
Noted. How would you feel about younger generations handling climate change with the same urgency your generation?
We’re stuck holding a lot of your bags, what if we just decide we don’t want to?
Comment by Candy Dogood Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:33 am
–And oversight is so lax–
I present my most recent tax return to our township assessor (an unbeatable Democrat in a rural county) each year as verification. No verification, no freeze.
Comment by Stix Hix Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:51 am
Is this not prosecutable tax fraud?
Comment by thechampaignlife Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 11:52 am
Is the senior exemption based on income rather than wealth?
Comment by Dee Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 1:04 pm
Is falsely signing an affidavit claiming income no higher than $65,000 a crime? Or is it treated like signing up for two homeowner exemptions? If legislators want to help seniors who need it, then they should criminalize fraud by wealthy seniors who don’t qualify.
Comment by anon2 Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 1:15 pm
How do you have the means to purchase an “oceanfront condo in Boca Raton, Florida” if your household income is
Comment by itsjustme Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 1:17 pm
===based on income===
There’s a lot of ways to define income and to define loss. For someone that is wealthy it certainly is possible to record a loss, but it is difficult to do so over many years. Very wealthy people will take loans out at low rates and use their other sources of wealth as collateral that can help avoid income taxation over a period of time.
Without considerable loss, or relying on debt to fund ones day to day expenses, it would be difficult for a person to avoid having income above the threshold for as many years that they have without a scheme that might be questionable. If a trust or other apparatus is paying all of your expenses, in most cases that is going to count as income.
Due to the intentional gutting of the IRS there is also a lot more tax fraud and tax schemes going on at higher income levels than I think most people would be comfortable with. So they might be reporting very little income and not getting any scrutiny.
On the Illinois side they might be creatively pretending all of their income is received in Florida or creatively claiming to only be Florida residents for tax purposes.
Comment by Candy Dogood Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 1:27 pm
Berrios wasn’t interested in this because it (i) effectively raised taxes on a key component of his base, and (ii) the cost to his budget for the ten to fifteen folks he would need to review, process, and investigate these issues would exceed the amount the County would get back from it. At 178 million in annual Ptax collection, that nets the county only about 1 million bucks. As a net zero proposition with a impactful negative political consequence, it doesn’t shock me that benign neglect was the order of the day.
What really irks me is the ongoing computer issues being used as the excuse.
Comment by Just Another Anon Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 1:44 pm
===When I hear people in Cook County complain about property taxes, it makes me insane.===
Depends on “where” in Cook. Did you hear about the house in the south suburbs that sold for $110,000, tax bill over $6,000 a year? There are many.
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/residential-real-estate/heres-how-much-more-south-suburban-homeowners-pay-taxes
Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 2:20 pm
problem is there are two Senior exemptions….the one every senior gets, and the senior freeze that is dependent on a variety of factors. certain zones would seem to be not eligible from jump. in my experience there are lots of oops assessments in Cook County. valuation not matching actual property but based on house that existed before the knock down was aneighborhood talk of one huge house.
Comment by Amalia Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 2:45 pm
The article mentions computer glitches several times. It seems hiring competent IT people would pay for itself.
Comment by Da Big Bad Wolf Friday, Jun 25, 21 @ 4:12 pm