Tony S. in Park Ridge: We’ve been lied to as taxpayers, we’ve been abused

Tony owns a 2,008 square foot, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home in Park Ridge with an assessed value of $512,000.

He bought the home in 2002 for $475,000, or $665,385 in today’s dollars.

“I moved to Park Ridge in 2002. My property taxes were $9,113 in property taxes,” Tony said. “I thought that was ridiculously high. I paid $475,000 for my house. That’s 1.9 percent of the value of my home. That’s when I bought the home in 2002. That was unreasonably high. I filed an appeal with the assessor and did a lot of fighting and arguing and finally got them to admit that they miscalculated my square footage. So they gave me a refund of $1,000 and they knocked down my property taxes down too. In 2005 my property taxes went down to $7600. But ever since then they’ve just been steadily going up.”

Tony’s tax bill rose from $7,187 in 2002 to $13,388 in 2017, an increase of 86 percent.

Tony’s tax bill rose from $7,187 in 2002 to $13,388 in 2017, an increase of 86 percent.

“I thought, if they kept property taxes at 1 percent of home value, that would be really fair because the taxpayers are the ones who work for the money,” Tony said. “They taxpayers should be the people who decide how much money the government gets.”

Altogether he has paid $192,515 in property taxes over the past 16 years of Park Ridge home ownership, or 37 of the home’s assessed value.

“[In] 2017 I paid $13,388 in property taxes…so now I am about 2.6 percent of my home value,” Tony said. “Which is way out of line from the national average. I paying between 14 to $13,000 for property taxes. That’s insane. I can’t save for my retirement. There’s not enough money for home maintenance. They are basically stealing my equity from me from my home. This obviously goes to Illinois’ corruption and over spending.”

While Tony’s home value has decreased by 14 percent, his property taxes have effectively increase more than twice what they were when he first bought the home.

“We’ve been lied to as taxpayers, we’ve been abused. This is crazy and something needs to be done,” Tony said.

Indiana has a hard 1 percent cap on property taxes. This means local governments are not allowed under state law to charge homeowner’s more than 1 percent of their home’s assessed value per year. The average property tax rate for the state of Indiana is 0.89 percent. Meanwhile the average property tax rate in Illinois is 2.3 percent.

If Tony lived in Indiana the most he could be charged in property taxes would be $5,120 per year or $8,268 less than what he currently pays in Illinois.