Since the release of our 2012 Effective Tax Rates report on September 29th the Civic Federation has fielded many inquiries about how to calculate the rates for municipalities outside the study. In response, this blog will go through the steps to calculate an effective tax rate for tax year 2012 (taxes payable in 2013) and provide links taxpayers can follow to gather the data they need to estimate…
Chicago-area public employee pension funding levels continued to decline in FY2012, with total unfunded liabilities for the ten funds analyzed rising to $37.2 billion from $32.0 billion in FY2011. On average, the ten funds analyzed had an actuarial funding level of 45.5% in FY2012, down from 74.5% in FY2003. For all pension funds supported by the taxes of Chicago residents, including…
The declining health of public employee pension funds throughout the State of Illinois is primarily due to two causes: inadequate employer contributions over a sustained period and recent investment losses. This blog will discuss the role of investment rate of return in public employee pension funding and provide an update on the investment returns of Chicago-area pension funds in FY2012, the…
This annual report compares effective property tax rates in the six-county region of northeastern Illinois between 2003 and 2012. Effective tax rates for nearly all selected communities rose between 2011 and 2012, the most recent year for which data are available. Among the 12 selected Cook County communities, the Civic Federation found Harvey had the highest effective tax rate for residential…
The most basic question about a pension fund is whether its assets are sufficient to cover total liabilities incurred. In this blog post, we examine the aggregate pension liabilities and Other Post Employment Benefit (OPEB) liabilities of ten large local government pension funds in the Chicago area and their collective assets.[1] Liabilities are calculated using actuarial assumptions about…
The difference between a pension fund’s assets and accrued liabilities is known as the unfunded liability. The unfunded actuarial accrued liability (UAAL) is calculated by subtracting the actuarial value of the assets from the actuarial accrued liability (AAL) of each fund. One of the functions of this indicator is to measure a fund’s ability to bring assets in line with liabilities. Healthy…
Unincorporated areas lie outside municipal boundaries. The residents and businesses located in these areas are usually provided municipal services such as police protection and building code enforcement by county government or special districts. Because unincorporated areas may be scattered throughout a county’s territory, the provision of these services by counties has been inefficient and…
The Civic Federation today released its annual estimate of the full value of real estate in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs. After the rate of decline in estimated property values slowed for the County as a whole in 2011, the rate of decline increased again in 2012. Tax year 2012 is the most recent year for which data are available. The 2012 estimate of the full value of property in Cook…
This report provides estimates of the total market value of real property in Cook County from 2003-2012 and shows how property value is spread among the City of Chicago, the northern and the southern suburbs. The full market value of real estate in Cook County was approximately $414.4 billion in tax assessment year 2012. This represents a decline of $28.4 billion or 6.4% from the 2011…
Second installment property tax bills for Cook County residents were mailed out this month, the third year in a row that they have been sent out on time. Between tax year 1977 and tax year 2011, second installment bills were sent out late every year according to the elected officials associated with the Cook County property tax process. Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office released the 2013 Cook…
