 According to the report, more than $1 billion statewide is diverted
each year from taxing districts to more than 970 TIF districts.
Despite this diversion, public information on how the money is being
spent and the effect on property tax bills for homeowners is
difficult and time-consuming to access. Blagojevich accepted the
recommendations Monday and pledged to review the study in hopes of
finding a way to quickly increase transparency for Illinois' TIF
districts.
The Department of Revenue study outlines a number of possible
transparency improvements, including a suggestion that the General
Assembly pass legislation to (a) require that specific TIF
information and reports be made available online by the state and
require that counties print the Web address on each tax bill; or (b)
require counties or municipalities to send a mailing to all
homeowners, providing aggregate TIF information for the county and a
Web link to a state site where additional information about specific
TIF districts is available.
The study concluded that it is feasible to print TIF district
information on property tax bills themselves, including TIF district
names and identification numbers, the initial and current equalized
assessed value of the parcel, and a Web address where specific
information can be found.
The study, "Report on the Feasibility of Printing Tax Increment
Financing (TIF) District Information on Individual Tax Bills," was
mandated by
Public Act 95-227, House Bill 3434, sponsored by
Rep. Luis Arroyo,
D-Chicago, and Sen. John Cullerton, D-Chicago. The study directed
the Department of Revenue to determine what TIF district project
information could be printed on property tax bills, including a
description of the project, the initial equalized assessed value of
the property in the project area, the current equalized assessed
value of property in the project area, the impact of the TIF
district on tax rates and projected future impacts of TIF districts
on tax rates. The legislation also required the department to
identify obstacles to providing the information and ways to overcome
those obstacles.
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 To conduct the study, the Department of Revenue surveyed and met
with local property tax officials along with the companies that
provide the tax extension and billing software. The department
concluded that including specific information about each local TIF
district on property tax bills, such as project descriptions,
aggregate equalized assessed value and the impact on the tax rate,
could make property tax bills too confusing.
The tax extenders and collectors responded that printing the
requested information would add pages to tax bills, increase postage
and slow the process of producing tax bills, while causing more
confusion than insight.
"Just how much can we jam on the bill and expect the taxpayers to
understand it?" one official asked during the study.
The study suggests that the bill sponsors' goals of transparency
could be met by its recommendations to make TIF district information
available on the Web and inform property owners where to find the
information.
Currently, each TIF district has to file an annual report with
the comptroller's office, but that information is not compiled into
an easy-to-understand report, nor is the information made available
online for property owners to view.
The Illinois Department of Revenue
study can be found online at
tax.illinois.gov.
[To download Adobe Acrobat Reader for
the PDF file, click
here.]
[Text from
Illinois
Department of Revenue file received from
the
Illinois Office of
Communication and Information]
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