Results tagged “property”

Property tax rates for the Chicago area were announced yesterday, and the fight over how much to raise taxes flared up again. While Todd Stroger tried to make his proposed increases more palatable by offering to rebate any leftover cash from a tax hike that hasn't yet been approved, Mayor Daley took a different approach, sending Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey to a city budget hearing yesterday to shill for higher property taxes. Predictably, county commissioners...

In what what was quite possibly the most anti-climactic letter ever, Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office announced yesterday that it would stay out of the legal dispute between her dad, House Speaker Mike Madigan, and the Illinois Property Tax Appeals Board. In July, the Board, headed by Blagojevich ally Ron Messina, asked her office to rule on the possibility that the Speaker's second job as a property-tax appeals lawyer might disqualify him from taking a...

Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn

"How stupid are the drivers in this parking lot?" via kudzuplanet.

Ogilvie Transportation Center is being evacuated as we speak. At around 3:15, at least one person was shot. NBC 5 says that it could be a possible hostage situation. Traffic outside the Chicagoist office, which is across the street, is being rerouted as well. All we can hear is sirens. Update - 4:02 p.m.:The DHL guy just came into the Chicagoist office. He was on the 36th floor at Ogilvie when the incident occurred....

Moto’s Chef Homaro Cantu has invented an edible paper on which he prints his menus using organic inks and a Canon printer. OK, that’s a little off the wall, but we’ll believe it. After all, Chicago’s stock as an experimental culinary destination has been on the rise as of late. What makes Cantu’s paper, and many of his other gastronomical creations, different is the fact that he is applying to have them patented. He even goes so far as to print the following legal jargon on his tasty paper: Confidential Property of and © H. Cantu. Patent Pending. No further use or disclosure is permitted without prior approval of H. Cantu.

That’s the question many people in the city -- and around the country -- are asking themselves as the real estate market continues its dramatic cooldown. If you’re anything like Chicagoist, you were pretty darn close to falling prey to the allure of flipping a house. Watching people on HGTV turning tens of thousands of dollars in profit became a bit of a sad addiction. Like us, you probably thought, “Hey! I can flip a...

Berghoff Bidders

Two More Months Until Tax Day

We firmly believe that the government should tax the shit out of the rich. It's actually a good deal for everyone. You richies pay your taxes and pay for a greater share of the services that educate and care for us broke jokers. In exchange we cool it on the class warfare tip and try not to steal and ruin your expensive shit too often.

Ben Joravsky's column in the The Reader this week addresses something every property owner is thinking: Cook County's property tax assessments are wack. We briefly mentioned this fact earlier this week, but Joravsky's article picks up on an interesting study by Merlin Tripp, of Citizens for Fair Assessments and Taxes. Tripp's study uses the financial disclosures of various Chicago public officials to get a sampling of how much property tax bills have actually risen over...

True, people that have property, and actually pay property taxes aren't really Chicagoist's demographic (or we assume, we're not doing much market research these days). But as a public service, we thought we'd remind you of those taxes you gotta pay by 5:00 pm today. Cook County residents should hustle down to the County Treasurer's office in person by 5:00 pm, or pay on-line by 11:59 pm.