Small businesses and commercial property owners received advice from Audit Committee Commissioner Samantha Steele (2nd District) explains how to appeal the assessments and tax bills on their properties during a virtual forum Tuesday morning.
Meeting host and Council Member Clare Kelly (1st District) said she organized the program to help property owners learn how they can “potentially offset the costs of doing business in Evanston.” Steele, an Evanston resident and business owner herself, said she hopes the information can help the city’s businesses survive the area’s high tax burden.
“Running a business isn’t cheap, and property taxes are usually the biggest expense, along with inventory and employees,” Steele said. “I’m very conscious of that, and that’s why our goal at the Board of Review is to make sure your assessment is as accurate as possible.”
The three-member board is an elected body that hears appeals against the reduction of the Cook County Assessor’s Officewhich in turn reduces the tax burden on those properties. Although each commissioner represents a separate part of Cook County, all appeals are approved or denied by a majority vote of the entire body.
The who, when and how of objections
Steele said all property owners in Evanston have until Tuesday, Aug. 20, to file appeals for the 2024 tax year (2025 accounting period). After that, they have until Friday, Aug. 30, to submit evidence to reduce their levies. For small business owners, this includes documents such as detailed property descriptions, rent lists and three years of financial statements, as well as supporting documentation such as vacancy statements and information on recent sales.
One important note was that any small business that is legally required to pay property taxes on its premises can appeal, even if it leases that premises from another owner. Steele said this applies even if the property taxes are paid to the landlord and not directly to the county.
“If I’m the landlord and I tell you (the tenant), ‘This is just in our lease and you have to pay me these taxes before they’re due,’ then I’m the owner and I’m paying those taxes,” Steele said hypothetically. “But since you’re legally obligated to pay those taxes and comply with the agreements, you can appeal those assessments.”
This is particularly evident in Triple-net leaseswhere the tenant bears the tax burden themselves, but can also be demonstrated for other types of leases that include explicit tax obligations. Matt Fournier, Steele’s director of commercial valuations, encouraged business owners to check whether their leases give them special appeal rights.
While individual taxpayers can file an appeal on their own, taxpayers registered as corporations or LLCs must be represented by an attorney. Fournier said business owners without an attorney can still file an appeal by the Aug. 20 deadline and then use the 10 days until the Aug. 30 evidentiary deadline to get representation.
“The world is restructuring itself‘
While Steele’s jurisdiction is limited to appeals, she acknowledged that the need to appeal assessments each year stems from deeper problems with the property tax system as a whole. She said she was “surprised” by the “convoluted and backward” assessment system when she left her previous job as a county tax assessor in Indiana to work for Tax Assessor Fritz Kaegi during his first term.
“Coming from Indiana, you might think I’m coming into a state-of-the-art appraisal facility,” Steele said of joining the appraiser’s office in 2018. “And that’s just not the case here. It’s getting better, but we deserve more.”
She said meaningful policy reforms must be achieved through legislation and urged citizens to “demand answers and cooperation from all sides of our government.”
The assessment system and tax burden play a role in the broader long-term recovery and adjustment of the city’s business environment since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The city’s Economic Development Committee has continuously discussed the vacancy rates for office and retail space in the Downtown District, which in May were 53% and 73% higher respectively than in the first quarter of 2020.
Zalmezak said during Tuesday’s forum that the city is in “scary times” as “the world is restructuring” and called for the city to make proactive efforts to provide relief and incentives wherever possible.
“I’m worried about our commercial landlords because they’re going to face serious challenges as loans come due and things like that,” Zalmezak said. “And that means difficulties for our small businesses. So we’re really in a tough spot right now.”
Evanston, along with the rest of the northern suburbs, will be reassessed in 2025, and these new assessments will first be used in bills for the 2025 tax year (2026 billing). The second installment for the 2023 tax year was due August 1.
Documents and further information on appeals against the property tax assessment can be found on the Board of Review website.