Last week, we published an article titled “Vantage high rise gets 40% tax cut. Kaegi blames appeal processes.”
Since then, we’ve realized that the heading and some claims in the body of the article were inaccurate.
“After appealing the assessor’s figure with the Cook County Board of Review (BOR), Vantage’s market value was assessed at $48.5 million and the building’s 2020 tax bill was cut by 40 percent, to $4.9 million,” we wrote.
But what the property owner was assessed is not necessarily what they paid in taxes. According to documents held with the Cook County Treasurer’s office, Vantage paid $2,044,100.09 in total property taxes this year for the 2020 tax year. In tax year 2019, Vantage paid $1,348,234.20. That 2019 amount reflected the fact that for the first half of 2019, no taxes were assessed on one of the two PIN numbers associated with the Vantage property.
A BOR spokesperson said this week that the Oak Park Elementary School District 97 petitioned the BOR to lower Vantage’s assessment.
She said local taxing bodies typically conduct these kinds of interventions when they believe that an assessment is too high and won’t withstand an appeal to the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board (PTAB).
If the PTAB determines that a property’s assessment is too high, then local taxing bodies have to refund the money, the spokesperson said. So, as a preemptive measure, taxing bodies intervene.
“It’s much harder to refund something than to not get it in the first place,” the BOR spokesperson said.
We’ll be delving into this matter in more depth at a later date. In the meantime, Wednesday Journal regrets the error.
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com
