Ann, this is great news! Rick and I were just looking over the tax bill. We now pay $5,000 a year for our little townhome with one bathroom and no garage. But, I believe it did go up more than 10% from last year to this, so perhaps we will be able to save a few hundred dollars. I didn't quite get from reading it over three times if the increase is in the taxes or the assessed value?

So you really think I'll have to ride the bus all the way to the Skokie Court House to get the right form?

Candace - the savings is/are huge and is based on the increased assessed value which is really the prime reason for huge increases in your tax bill.

Here is the reason you should go to Skokie. It is an amazing community of people in pain yet still able to laugh and get to know one another. 2. Everything is done right there. At the end of the day all the longtime homeowner and other apps are processed and new tax bills are mailed to you immediately.

Very important that you have several forms filled out.

http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/forms/2008SRFrz.pdf
this is the senior freeze form - while you don't fill out the senior freeze app - on the second page is the income sheet - download and fill out the income sheet. Take it with you. This is the same sheet for longtime occupant exemption.

Certificate of error form - fill it out and take it with you. http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/forms/HoCofE.pdf. Don't fill out the certificate of error number or year - let them do that when your number is
called.

Take a copy of your current tax bill - 2nd installment and the 2nd installment of 2007 with you and a copy of both sides of your drivers license.

The office is on the first floor of the court house.

THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT EXEMPTION AND IF YOU QUALIFY, IT IS JUST PLAIN IGNORANT NOT TO APPLY. THE WAIT IS WORTH IT!

In addition to the long time occupant affidavit, It is possible the person that assists will have something else for you to fill out but if you take what I took - you will be way ahead. My visit with the assessor's deputy, once my number was called, took about 6 minutes.

Another tip. There is a guy acting as a facilitator in the room. Ignore him. Get your number, hang out until a deputy at the counter can see you.

Any questions?

By the way, this the kind of information our township assessor should be sharing.

Thanks so much Ann!
I may go do this tomorrow! I'll take copies of my husband's ID as well? Copies of former tax bills? Copies of Federal Tax Form for last three years?

A friendly 8th Ward neighbor called me up and shared with me that she gets this form by mail, and mails it in. We did not get this form in the mail. Would this be because our Escrow company pays the tax bill?

Any refund we get goes straight to the college tuition!

Canadace

See, Candace, now you are making this difficult. It is very simple.

1. no IRS returns are required. You fill out the 1 page income questionairre that I linked, and take it with you to the Assessors office.
It is an affidavait swearing that you are stating your income honestly.
As I said in /m17490
http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/forms/2008SRFrz.pdf
this is the senior freeze form - while you don't fill out the senior freeze app - on the second page is the income sheet - download and fill out the income sheet. Take it with you. This is the same sheet for longtime occupant exemption.

2. copies of the current 2nd installment bill are required - real estate, cook county, the one you just received and a copy of the 2007 cook county 2nd installment real estate tax bill - the one you got last year at this time.

as I said in /m17490
Take a copy of your current tax bill - 2nd installment and the 2nd installment of 2007 with you and a copy of both sides of your drivers license.

3. Copies of both sides of your drivers license, not your husband's unless you are not an owner taxpayer. If not an owner occupant then don't bother going. One of the owners must apply.

If your neighbor gets a longtime occupant app in the mail, she must supply all the same info as you. You must apply for this every year because it depends on income and occupancy of your home. I did not get any form in the mail and I don't escrow my taxes. Additionally I had been an applicant and recipient in the past.

I would be very interested to know how many people just received the longtime occupant form in the mail.

Unless you are eligible going back some years - I did not say anything about a refund. You get a new tax bill - tell me that your bank hasn't paid your bill early.

as I said in /m17490
Here is the reason you should go to Skokie.... At the end of the day all the longtime homeowner and other apps are processed and new tax bills are mailed to you immediately.

Sigh. So much for that. My husband came home, and we dug out all our paperwork, and looked at the forms online. Our property tax has doubled, increased by 100% over the last four years. However, our income is too large to qualify us for the Long-time Occupant Homestead Exemption.

I certainly should not complain about our income, but the amount that put us over the line was interest income on the money we had set aside for the children's education. We decided NOT to invest this cash money we had, and put it into CD's instead, meaning that this very important money survived the investment crash of the Great Recession and we still have it. And the interest income as well.

The lesson here, my friends, is that even though we own no car, a tiny town home with one bathroom and no garage, even we have trouble living on one professional income. My part-time employment will have to increase to full-time (such timing, I know) in order to keep our oldest in a state college and have enough four years later for the next child.

If you want to know about the futility of scholarships in a year with the largest number of college students in the history of our nation, I could give you an earful.

Edited by author 11-03-2009 07:59 PM
as I said in /m17488:
 
I am discovering that many people do not know about this exemption. If you own your home and have lived in your home 10 years and have a household income under 100,000, please read below.

Ann, there's something I don't understand: I, too, am horrified on my friends' behalf when I hear about their tax bills (we seem to be fortunate, but we live on 1/6 of a parcel) I assume something obvious is escaping me, but things don't seem to be adding up - where is all this money going? It would seem to me that if many people's taxes are doubling and everyone else's is going up that the amount available to the City should be going up, too.

Can you explain the disconnect between the extreme increases in property taxes and the City's (and other tax-dependent entities') budget crises?

Waste, fraud, abuse, patronage, and corruption. Feel free to add to the list.

Just saw the TV ad against St. Francis Hospital. It appears that a union is running this ad.

Based on the ad, I would conclude that they want the hospital to close. They have nothing good to say about the hospital -- shoddy care, higher costs is what the ad alleges.

If the hospital is as bad as the ad suggests, why does anyone want to work there? If the hospital had no employees, it would need to close, right?

If all of the employees left, the hospital would close. Is that what those running the ad want -- a shuttered hospital?

P.S. Based on a previous campaign, I think that I know what the union is trying to do. But the ad seems to be a very backwards way of doing it. Are they saying that the regulators should close the hospital down? Then there won't be any jobs there. Also, is scaring away business going to help the hospital keep employees on the payroll?

Our tax bill give us, to the dime, exactly where our money was going, and the City of Evanston doesn't get a very big cut. It also showed the increase for each taxing district, some of them just $10 or $12, not very much, but boy does it add up. The schools, and Cook County take the biggest haul.

Cook Country is where I'd start the budget chainsaw, but I only have one vote. I am shocked that when the high schools were ranked that ETHS was not very near the top of the list. On the other hand, being such a large school it has large populations of every kind of student who requires extra resources to educate.

I've noticed quite a lot of for sale signs still up, including the house at the end of our alley, across Asbury which has been brought back from the dead in order to put it on the market.

Ann, FYI. When we last visited about the sidewalks in front of the gas station at Asbury/Oakton, you said that they would be repaired when all the other walks were done around the city. It looks to me like that work has been completed, but the temporary patch remains.

re: /m17495
Ann, you are SO right on this one. I had to educate the township assessor on this one last year and ended up saving over $2,500 on my tax bill. However, you would think that the county would have sent me an application for this year. No such luck. Another hour in the Skokie office, but well worth it. The entire process at the counter was less than 5 minutes. I wonder how many people don't know this exemption exists.

Chris - as I said I received no form either and am curious about the woman Candace spoke of. The Long time occupant exemption is a secret and that is all there is to it. The relief is tremendous.

This flier has everything you need to know about parking etc. We are area 4. You do not have to move your car on dates when there is no cleaning - read this - make your lives easier. Print it out! http://www.cityofevanston.org/departments/...finalWebMarch25.pdf

Might be time to reread this great newslettere - the season is changing, refresh your memory!

What is the deadline for applying for the Long-time Occupant Homestead Exemption (LOHE)?