Taxes shouldn't be this hard to pay

Let's say you have recently purchased a new condominium unit in a large development and the county has not yet assigned individual tax parcel numbers to each unit. The entire development is still being assessed under just one tax number.

But the development isn't selling well and most units are still held by the developer, who may not be able to pay the property taxes.

As the owner of a single unit, the only way to protect your condo from being lumped with unsold units and possibly being subjected to a tax sale is to pay by legal description. That takes your unit out of the "pack" and ensures it would not be grouped with other units and offered at sale.

Last year, the Kane County collector supported a legislative change to make acceptance of payment by legal description discretionary and not mandatory, as had been the requirement of the prior law.

House Bill 5069 was proposed to return the mandatory requirement to accept payment by legal description because it is the only means a taxpayer has available to protect his or her property when it has not yet been assigned its own tax identification number.

On March 26, the Kane County Board voted to oppose the mandatory acceptance via legal description because, among other inane reasons, it "requires manual processing of tax payments, increasing personnel costs to county collectors."

In other words, they don't want to do it because it takes too much work to assist a taxpayer who has no other means of protecting their property from a tax sale.

I strongly urge all Kane County taxpayers to contact their board members and force them to drop their opposition to this bill.

Paying property taxes is hard enough without having to fight the collector to take your money.

Donald T. Rubin

President,

Illinois Property Tax

Lawyers Association

Chicago