By Maria Pappas

Property owners who were unable to pay their tax bills in full by the August 1 due date do not have to fear losing their homes – at least not immediately.

As a homeowner, you have time to pay your past due taxes, but you will incur additional interest costs.

You now also have access to a free online financial planning tool to make smaller payments over time.

We call it the Payment Plan Calculator and it is available at cookcountytreasurer.com. With the calculator you can:

• Set up a schedule to pay a tax bill in smaller installments rather than all at once
• Choose between monthly or semi-monthly payments
• Create a personal plan to catch up on back taxes if you owe more than $100

I hope the calculator will ease taxpayers’ worries about losing their home, business or other property because of unpaid taxes. If you were unable to pay the full amount by the due date, you have about 13 months to pay off your bill before your unpaid tax debt is auctioned off at the annual tax auction.

Remember: The goal is to avoid the annual tax sale – period!

During those 13 months, you’ll be charged interest at 9% per year, or 0.75% per month. That’s a modest annual cost of $90 for every $1,000 of back taxes you owe. The annual interest rate was 18% before this year, but I pushed through legislative reforms that cut the rate in half.

If your unpaid residential taxes are purchased by a tax buyer at the annual tax sale, you have about two and a half years to collect your taxes. This means you will have to pay your unpaid taxes plus interest in one lump sum. The vast majority of delinquent taxes are collected because people want to keep their homes and other property.

In some cases, tax buyers can take possession of property – but not until about four years after the original due date. That’s how the system works. These delays are designed to give property owners every opportunity to pay their taxes and keep their property.

The new payment plan calculator is our latest effort to help people stay in their own homes. Other initiatives, such as promoting refunds and tax exemptions on my radio programs Black Houses Matter and Latino Houses Matter, also aim to give people the opportunity to build generational wealth with their most important financial asset – their home.