Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas is pictured. [Provided]

The Cook County Treasurer’s Office’s latest study showed nearly $2 billion in property taxes were shifted to homeowners from business owners as a result of successful appeals by business owners over three years.

The study, released alongside a data page Monday, is the first of its kind in terms of showing the impact of the county’s property tax appeals system on tax bills, although previous studies have shown how businesses have often successfully used the appeals process to shift the majority of the tax burden back to homeowners following annual reassessments. 

“This study helps explain why many homeowners have experienced sticker shock when opening their property tax bills in recent years,” Treasurer Maria Pappas said in a news release. “We hope our findings help guide policy makers in their ongoing efforts to make the appeals system more equitable.” 

Between 2021 and 2023, representing one triennial assessment cycle, business owners across the county were able to reduce their bills by nearly $3.3 billion cumulatively by reducing their assessed value by about $25.5 billion total. Homeowners were hit with more than $1.9 billion of additional taxes as a result. 

That equated to a 12.5 percent reduction in business owners’ collective tab while homeowners’ bills rose a collective 6.9 percent at the same time. 

Additionally, homeowners were only able to reduce their assessed values by $2.8 billion over that same three-year period. 

The other $1.4 billion that would have been paid by those businesses would’ve gone to special taxing districts but were instead entirely eliminated as a result of the appeals, according to the study.  

The treasurer’s office study also showed that the percentage increases for homeowners were disproportionately higher in places with low-income minority populations. That disproportionate impact is partially attributable to the rates at which higher income and white homeowners appeal their assessed values versus Black and Latino homeowners and low-income homeowners. 

“Although every Cook County property owner has a right to contest their assessment, most residents in lower income and minority areas do not challenge their assessments,” the study said.  

For instance, white homeowners appealed at a rate of 35.5 percent compared to 10.85 percent for homeowners in Black neighborhoods and 14.06 percent for Latino homeowners, according to the treasurer’s office study. 

Homeowners in the highest-income areas appealed 46 percent of the time during the period studied, taxpayers in the lowest-income areas appealed 11 percent of the time, according to the study. 

Reasons for this may vary, the study said, but some likely include lower income and minority homeowners having less time to appeal, a belief that they lack the clout to win an appeal or having insufficient resources to pay an attorney for the best chance at success — though the study didn’t find any significant correlation between the rate of success and whether a homeowner, wealthy or poor, hired an attorney or tax representative. 

It is perhaps not surprising then, that in wealthy areas of Cook County — households making $150,000 or more — the additional tax burden went up by 5.2 percent as a result of appeals, and in areas with households making $50,000 or less, the shift led to a 9.8 percent increase.  

Additionally, businesses are far more likely to appeal their assessments. In addition to businesses often winning larger reductions in assessed value, the study showed businesses appealed about 64 percent compared to homeowners, which appealed 27 percent of the time. 

And while businesses received larger reductions than homeowners collectively, there has been a widening gap between the rate classes in the past decade, according to the study. 

Businesses’ assessed value reductions totaled $9.9 billion during the 2015-2017 assessment cycle compared to $25.5 billion for 2021-2023. By contrast, homeowners — who experienced reductions of $3.2 billion from appeals during the 2015-2017 cycle — saw that total drop to $2.8 billion in assessed value from appeals.  

The study also includes suggestions for how to improve the disparities, including increased data sharing and standardization of valuation methodology between the Cook County Board of Review and Assessor’s Office — some of that has already started, and while the treasurer said she was pleased with some of the cooperation between the board and assessor's office she urged more.   

“I’m heartened that the Assessor and Board of Review are already addressing some of the underlying issues that cause this unequal shift in the tax burden, because the Cook County residents earning the least shouldn’t be shouldering the most, when it comes to taxes,” Pappas said in the release.  

The study also suggests exploring an annual reassessment of the county instead of a triennial cycle to create more uniformity and mitigate annual increases. It also suggests providing more tools, information and resources to low-income and marginalized communities to contest their assessments, but the study warns that could still only increase the strain on the county’s appeals system.