Some must pay erroneous Cook County property taxes after bills not corrected before due date

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Property taxes are due Thursday, and the I-Team is updating its coverage on property tax assessment mistakes.

The ABC7 Chicago I-Team uncovered more than 4,000 errors made by the Cook County Assessor's Office.

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After the investigation, the assessor scrambled to fix the errors before the bills went out.

But, not all of them were automatically corrected, so some people will have to pay that original bill, for now.

"Almost all of them, the bills were made accurate by fixing them before the bills were sent out," Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi said.

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Kaegi's office fixed about 4,400 assessment errors his office made in the south and southwest suburbs. But, just under a couple hundred of them will not be corrected by the time bills are due because the Cook County Board of Review did not yet approve those certificates of error.

A letter from Kaegi to county commissioners about the errors was released in June, after ABC7's reporting on high assessments and errors.

In it, Kaegi said his, "office is correcting a significant number of property values in the South and West suburbs for Tax Year 2023."

"We don't know where they came up with these figures," said Jami Flaws, who contacted the I-Team.

Flaws of unincorporated Lyons Township has one of the corrected properties. Her tax assessment spiked, more than doubling her taxes.

"The thought of losing it to taxes is heartbreaking," said Anne Dugravot, whose property was also miscalculated.

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Dugravot of unincorporated south suburban Homewood is still waiting for a correction. Her property taxes also more than doubled.

The Cook County Board of Review had to approve 980 of the 4,400 errors, and, out of that number, a couple hundred are in a holding pattern for various reasons.

Many of them were delayed because, like Dugravot, they had already appealed with the state appeal process, the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board.

Because of that, the Cook County Board of Review said they could eventually end up getting a bigger refund.

"We should not be interrupting a pending legal case," said Samanta Steele, a commissioner with the Cook County Board of Review, 2nd District. "If we go and change that, it could do these taxpayers a disservice."

"This is an example of how our convoluted system in Illinois really frustrates taxpayers when we're trying to make sure that errors are corrected before bills are sending out," Kaegi said.

The board of review said some "certificates of error" were denied because they would have increased the property's assessed value.

Anyone waiting on a correction should check with the board of review and the state's appeal branch, PTAB.

Tax bills are due Thursday, but there are payment plan options.