If Illinois lawmakers are serious about property tax reforms, here's a next step
Illinois homeowners are told the same story every year: Property taxes are rising, the system is complicated, and relief comes through appeals or payment plans. What they are rarely told is the most important truth — the system is functioning exactly as designed.
There is no single point of accountability, and the outcomes are anything but neutral. The data makes that clear.
In recent reassessment cycles, median residential property tax bills rose by more than 130% in West Garfield Park and more than 80% in Englewood —predominantly Black and Brown, low-to-moderate income communities on Chicago’s West and South sides. Across many South Side and West Side neighborhoods, increases averaged roughly 30%, far exceeding citywide trends.
By contrast, the citywide average residential increase was approximately 16.7%, while downtown commercial property owners experienced a net reduction in their overall tax burden.
These disparities are not occurring in a vacuum. In the neighborhoods experiencing the steepest increases, median household incomes have remained flat or grown modestly— nowhere near the pace of tax bill increases. In practical terms, homeowners are being asked to absorb doubling tax bills without anything close to doubling incomes.
This is not a coincidence. It is a redistribution of wealth in the most regressive way imaginable.
While the system harms many homeowners, its most severe consequences fall on Black and Brown households on Chicago’s South and West Sides, reflecting a pattern of disproportionate adverse impact that policymakers can no longer plausibly treat as accidental.
Property taxes in Illinois are zero-sum. Budgets for schools, city services, county government, parks, libraries and courts are set first. When one class of property owners successfully reduces its share — most often through sophisticated appeals — the burden shifts elsewhere. Increasingly, that "elsewhere" has been homeowners with the fewest resources to navigate a fragmented system.
When downtown commercial property owners reduced their share by roughly 15%, by our calculations, the impact was substantial. That reduction translates into an estimated $700 million to $900 million annually shifted away from large commercial owners and redistributed across the rest of the tax base. That portion of the tax levy did not disappear. It was passed on to the communities where resistance was weakest.
Illinois has confronted this issue before. In 2019, the state convened a Property Tax Relief Task Force that grew to roughly 88 members. It produced hearings and reports but no reforms that meaningfully changed outcomes for the homeowners bearing the greatest burden. The lesson is not that reform is impossible. It is that scale without discipline produces process, not change.
If Illinois is serious about property tax equity, the state should convene a Chicago Property Tax Equity Task Force — intentionally smaller, state-led and time-bound, using Chicago as a pilot. Chicago is not an exception; it is a stress test where state policy, county administration and city financing tools collide most visibly.
To maximize effectiveness, we recommend a task force of 15 to 17 members representing the Illinois General Assembly, the Illinois Department of Revenue, the Property Tax Appeals Board, the Cook County assessor, Board of Review, clerk, treasurer, the city’s TIF administrator, independent nonpartisan tax policy experts and homeowners from the most impacted communities.
Its charge must be concrete. Within six months, the task force should deliver draft legislative and administrative reforms, and within nine months, a final implementation package — then sunset. Key reforms should include equity reporting, creating income-based circuit breaker property tax relief, returning uncommitted TIF funds to taxing districts and replacing 18% annual interest payment plans with interest-free options.
The inequities are measurable. The data already exists. The question is whether Illinois— and Chicago — are prepared to correct them on purpose.
Remel Terry is president of the Chicago Westside NAACP. Karl Brinson is former president of the Chicago Westside NAACP. Valerie F. Leonard is founder of Nonprofit Utopia LLC. Craig K. Wimberly is president of the Coalition of African American Leaders.