One Morgan County municipality will not have to hold a truth-in-taxation hearing this year.
The Village of South Jacksonville’s property tax levy is increasing but not enough to trigger a truth-in-taxation hearing with the public.
Illinois’ Property Tax Extension Limitation Law s designed to limit the increases in property tax extension (total taxes billed) for non-home rule taxing districts. PTELL does not “cap” either individual property tax bills or individual property assessments. Instead, the PTELL allows a taxing district to receive a limited inflationary increase in tax extensions on existing property plus an additional amount for new construction, newly annexed areas, and recovered TIF valuations. If the tax rate goes above 5% from the previous year, a hearing is triggered.
Village Treasurer Mindy Olson says South Jacksonville’s increase falls beneath the 5% trigger: “[The levy] is under the 5%. We’re roughly at…the overall general [rate] is up about 2% and the road and bridges levy is up, I believe, to 4.6% over last year’s numbers. We’re not triggering PTELL, the truth-in-taxation, or anything like that.”
Village President Dick Samples says that a person’s personal property tax bill is contingent upon reassessment: “Now, the real truth there is, too is if your house goes up in value, appraised value and [the county assessor’s office] sets the taxes as such, then your taxes could be greater than 105% of the bill from last year. They were going to go up anyway.”
Olson says people should not assume that because they live in the Village of South Jacksonville that their individual property tax bill is going up. She says it is also dependent upon all of the other taxing bodies that property lies in. She says those taxing bodies could be raising their levy, which may cause a tax bill to increase.