Some are having to pay incorrect Cook County property taxes after bills weren’t corrected by the assessor before the due date

CHICAGO (WLS) — Property taxes are due Thursday and the investigation team is updating its coverage of property tax assessment errors.

ABC7 Chicago’s investigative team uncovered more than 4,000 errors made by the Cook County Assessor’s Office.

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After the investigation, the assessor was quick to correct the errors before the invoices were sent.

But not all of them were automatically corrected, so some people will have to pay the original bill, for now.

“Almost all of the bills were corrected before they were sent out,” said Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi.

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Kaegi’s office has corrected about 4,400 assessment errors made by his office in the south and southwest suburbs. But just under 200 of those will not be corrected by the bills’ due date because the Cook County Board of Review has not yet approved those error certificates.

A letter from Kaegi to county commissioners regarding the errors was released in June, after ABC7 reported on the high assessments and errors.

Kaegi said his office is “correcting a significant number of property values ​​in the south and west suburbs for fiscal year 2023.”

“We don’t know where these numbers are coming from,” said Jami Flaws, who contacted the investigation team.

The unincorporated community of Lyons Township is one of the properties that was corrected. Its tax assessment increased, doubling its taxes.

“The thought of losing it to taxes is heartbreaking,” said Anne Dugravot, whose property was also miscalculated.

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Ms. Dugravot, of Homewood, an unincorporated southern suburb, is still waiting for a correction. Her property taxes have also more than doubled.

The Cook County Board of Review had to approve 980 of the 4,400 errors, and of those, a few hundred are pending for various reasons.

Many of them were delayed because, like Dugravot, they had already appealed to the state’s appeals process, the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board.

Because of this, the Cook County Board of Review said he could potentially get a larger refund.

“We should not interrupt a court case that is in progress,” said Samanta Steele, a commissioner on the Cook County Board of Review, 2nd District. “If we change that, it could be a disservice to taxpayers.”

“This is an example of how our convoluted system in Illinois really frustrates taxpayers when we try to make sure errors are corrected before bills are sent out,” Kaegi said.

The review board said some “certificates of error” were denied because they would have increased the assessed value of the property.

Anyone awaiting correction should check with the state’s review board and appellate branch, PTAB.

Tax bills are due Thursday, but there are payment plan options.