The fiasco on pre-paying property taxes

Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, you have to marvel at our government in action. You would like to think after knowing several months beforehand that the 2018 tax reform bill, that was recently passed, that our local, state, county and federal governments would have their act together long before thousands of taxpaying residents began paying their real estate taxes prior to Jan. 1, 2018, to take advantage of prepaying those taxes in 2017.

Now, the IRS steps in and says if you are not issued your actual documented tax bill, you may not claim an estimated sum to prepay the tax. To top it off, some counties in Illinois stated you can deduct either one half, 100 percent or even 105 percent of your tax bill but then some counties would only allow 50 percent of the prepaid tax bill. Really!

Our government agencies let us down by jumping the gun without properly looking into this issue before thousands deposited their checks into their local county escrow accounts. Where are all the local county officials and why did they not address this issue with the IRS before taking in all the prepaid tax monies?

Now it seems all the counties will be holding all the prepaid tax money in escrow and collecting interest on those millions of dollars of resident taxpayers' monies. If the IRS is going to enforce the assessment documentation rule, then refunding all monies should take place, you would think. No word if this will occur either. I would bet that won't happen, so who will gain from the interest on the monies in escrow? You can bet it won't be you, the prepaying taxpayer.

Roman E. Strzala

Bloomingdale