Prairie State Wire

Another tax study, another loss for Illinois taxpayers.

Illinois again has the highest effective property tax rate in the nation.

Not only that, five of the top 10 metro areas with the highest property tax rates in the nation are in Illinois: Rockford, Champaign-Urbana, Peoria, Springfield, and Chicago. That’s according to a study done by ATTOM Data Solutions, a company that provides comprehensive data on property values and taxes across the nation.

Illinois’ 2023 effective property tax rate – taxes paid as a share of median home value – is 1.88 percent, highest in the nation and up from 1.78 percent the prior year. New Jersey, the state that competes yearly with Illinois for highest property taxes, came in second worst at 1.64 percent. Connecticut at 1.54 percent, New York at 1.46 percent, and Nebraska at 1.46 percent round out the top five.

Of the states that border Illinois, Iowa comes closest at 1.25 percent – still way below Illinois’ rate. And tax rates in Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky are way lower, all around 0.80 percent.

And the story for the metro areas is just as bad.

Rockford has the 2nd-highest effective property tax rate of all metro areas nationally at 2.41%. It is one of only two metro areas in the country with rates above 2 percent.

Champaign-Urbana has the third-highest rate nationally at 1.95 percent. Peoria and Springfield are fifth and sixth worst with rates of 1.9 percent. The Chicago metro area comes in eighth worst with a rate of 1.84 percent.

Gov. Pritzker promised property tax relief in his 2020 State of the State speech. He even created a task force to make tax cut proposals. It never delivered a final report and the governor never delivered relief.