Kane County assessment complaints high, rate low

Kane County set a record for the number of taxpayers filing property assessment complaints in the most recent 2011 tax year cycle, but statistics released Thursday show taxpayers in other counties are even more upset.

Taxpayers file assessment complaints in hopes of lowering their individual share of the local tax burden. Kane County has 3,133 of those complaints in this filing period to tackle. Those complaints involve more than 5,000 land parcels for the first time in county history. Some of the increase in complaints stems from there simply being more parcels in the county.

The number of parcels receiving tax bills for the 2011 tax cycle is about 5 percent higher than in 2006. But the number of people filing assessment complaints in 2011 is 548 percent higher than 2006.

Supervisor of Assessments Mark Armstrong said Thursday those numbers don’t look pretty, but when you look at the number of complaints as a percentage of all the parcels in Kane County, the level of taxpayer angst is relatively low.

“At a complaint rate of 2.85 percent, we’re second lowest among the collar counties,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong constructed a chart using his complaint rate calculations to put all the collar counties on a level playing field when it comes to comparing which counties have the highest assessment complaint burdens.

The chart shows Lake County has the highest complaint rate in the area for its number of tax parcels at 9.53 percent. McHenry County has the second highest complaint rate at 5.98 percent. DuPage County is third with a complaint rate of 3.87 percent. The only collar county with a lower assessment complaint rate than Kane County, factoring in the number of tax parcels, is Will County with a complaint rate of 1.37 percent, according to Armstrong’s chart.

Overall, the collar counties have an aggregate complaint rate of 4.68 percent.

Here’s a look at the raw data:

DuPage County: 12,955 assessment complaints for 2011 compared to 334,792 tax parcels.

Kane County: 5,475 assessment complaints for 2011 compared to 192,302 tax parcels.

Lake County: 25,540 assessment complaints for 2011 compared to 268,090 tax parcels.

McHenry County: 8,920 assessment complaints for 2011 compared to 149, 285 tax parcels.

Will County: 3,591 assessment complaints for 2011 compared to 263,012 tax parcels.