QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT "ACQUISITION-BASED" ASSESSING WHAT IS "ACQUISITION-BASED" ASSESSING? It is a method of assessing properties for taxes. It is tied directly to the actual purchase price of a property. It puts a limit on the increases of assessments until a property is sold. While you own your property, your assessment cannot go up more than 2% a year. You won’t see increases of 30 – 40 – 75 or 120% while you own the property – ever. Your assessments will not go up because of the sale prices in your neighborhood. Your assessments are not tied to what your neighbor gets when they sell their property. The assessment increases are limited to 2% per year. "Acquisition-based" assessing applies to ALL types of properties, commercial, industrial, residential, owner occupied or not. HOW DOES IT WORK? When this new method starts (we hope it will be next year before the next triennial), the assessment for your property will be limited to an increase of only 2%. When a property is sold, it will be reassessed based on the actual sale price. It will be a real number, clear and understandable. Increases for the new owner will be assessed on the actual purchase price. The next year their increases will be limited to 2% just like everyone else. There will be some adjustments for commercial and industrial properties like the Sears Tower because they don’t come up for sale very often. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BENEFITS OF "ACQUISITION-BASED" ASSESSING? Your real estate taxes will be predictable. You will be able to do long-term planning for you and your family. You won’t be taxed on so-called increases in your property value (“unrealized capital gains”) that are based on your neighbors’ sale price. Communities become more stable. Long-term owners will be protected. Even if new comers begin to drive up prices, current residents will not be forced from their homes by huge increases in their property taxes that are beyond their control. Renters and business will be protected too. New buyers will know what their taxes will be for many years into the future, before they buy the property. Fairness is maintained between neighbors with similar properties because the new buyers will have chosen to buy with full knowledge and acceptance of the tax differences. All owners will understand the property tax system better because the process for determining new assessments will be clear and transparent. Because the method for paying taxes will finally be clear, residents and the community will be able to focus their attention on the total size of government budgets and the objects of government spending. I’M A RENTER, HOW WILL "ACQUISITION-BASED" ASSESSING BENEFIT ME? Because this assessing method applies to ALL real estate, rental buildings will be included too. As long as the owners of the building you live in keep the property their assessments cannot go up more than 2% a year. This means that they won’t need to keep raising your rent due to large increases in their assessments. There won’t be any. Their taxes will be stable and predictable just like everyone else’s’. So your rent won’t be going up because the assessments on the building you live in will be held to a 2% increase a year. This would also help a small business that rents their space too. HOW WILL "ACQUISITION-BASED" ASSESSING AFFECT THE AMOUNT OF MONEY GOING TO OUR SCHOOLS FROM PROPERTY TAXES? It will have no effect whatsoever. Whatever assessing method is chosen has no bearing on how much money the schools ask for each year. The State of Illinois limits, by law, the amount that schools and most taxing bodies can demand from property taxes to a yearly increase of 5% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Historically, the Chicago Public Schools have gone to Washington D.C. or Springfield each year to ask for more money rather than attempting to pass a citywide referendum to voluntarily raise our property taxes. HOW WILL "ACQUISITION-BASED" ASSESSING AFFECT THE AMOUNT OF MONEY GOING TO OUR CITY AND COUNTY GOERNMENTS FROM PROPERTY TAXES? It will have no effect whatsoever. The City and the County Board are both “Home Rule” bodies meaning that they have the power today to raise your property tax rates by a simple majority vote in the City Council or County Board. Politically raising property tax rates has been the "third rail" of local political reality and the two bodies have chosen to raise user fees, parking ticket fees, amusement, sales tax, hotel tax and lease taxes. They have also benefited from huge increases in assessments every triennial, which gives them a windfall of new cash until the next reassessment….and so on. Download this form