By Herm Smith

The headline version of TIFs for Dummies is:

TIFs are a dangerous game we’re playing with our property taxes.

TIFs can increase your property taxes. If you live in a TIF district, how much you’re paying into the TIF fund isn’t even itemized on your tax bill.

When a TIF is approved, it freezes the amount of property tax dollars the schools, the parks, the city, and other taxing bodies get from that district for 23 years. If the schools were getting $100 from a TIF district when it was created, that’s roughly all they’ll get until the TIF expires. Any extra tax money, generated by rising assessments or new development, goes into the TIF fund, which [the City] is free to use largely as [it] wants.

So if the schools can only get $100 from a TIF district, what do they do when their expenses go up to $200? They have to raise their levies to compensate for the money diverted to the TIFs. When they do that, property taxes go up. No matter what the city tells you, TIFs are tax hikes, plain and simple—the more you create, the higher taxes go.

Taxes are calculated by multiplying our property’s value by the tax rate. Every other year the County reassesses what your property’s worth. The higher its value, the more you’re going to pay, unless, of course, the city and county decide they want to cut taxes by drastically cutting the tax rate.

To read the longer C-Span-type story, click on:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/theworks/071101/