Matteson School District 162

A property tax levy is the legal process by which a school district makes a request for a certain amount of funds to be raised by property taxes to fund the school district.

The tax levy formula is established by State law and is codified in the Illinois School Code. School districts request an amount of money to fund the schools from property taxes. The Cook County Clerk’s office reviews that amount and then limits it to an amount that is no larger than the prior year tax levy plus the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or 5%, whichever is less. Districts can also receive additional money from new property that was not on the tax rolls the previous year.

Although the Illinois constitution says that the “State has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education,” the State of Illinois only provides about 40% of the revenue for District 162, an additional 16% is funded by federal funds and grants with the remaining 44% coming from property taxes. The new state funding formula for schools developed in 2017 has helped ease that burden somewhat with new state funds being allocated to districts based on need and also by providing Property Tax Relief Grants to school districts, including District #162.

The district actively writes for grants to help fund district programs and has received the State of Illinois Property Tax Relief Grant three times in the past four years. These grants provide additional funding from the State of Illinois in exchange for abating the tax levy by a similar amount. For levy year 2022 (taxes due on December 1, 2023), the District 162 levy actually decreased from the prior year by 1.4%. A 5-year historical graph of the District 162 tax levy (below) shows that this year’s tax levy is actually lower than it was in 2018:

District 162 is only one taxing body on the tax bill, so while its levy went down this year, other taxing bodies included in your tax bill may have increased their tax levy this year. The Cook County Treasurer has a tool on her website that allows a taxpayer to enter their property PIN number from their tax bill and see a breakdown of how their tax bill increased or decreased. That link can be found here: Cook County Treasurer's Office

Tax levies are divided up among taxpayers based on their property value relative to the property value of all other taxpayers in the district. So, if an individual taxpayer’s property value increased significantly while, in the same year, the property values of others in the district decreased it can shift the tax burden, thereby increasing the tax bill of the taxpayer whose property value went up significantly.

No. Tax bills are determined by the levies of the taxing bodies each year and then divided up by the percentage of each property’s equalized assessed value (EAV) relative to the values (EAV) of all property combined in the district. If the value of all property in Rich Township goes up, it doesn’t mean that tax bills will increase unless the levies of the taxing bodies increase.

District 162 recently approved its tentative 2023 property tax levy and projects that, on average, taxpayers will likely see a 2.8% increase in the District 162 portion of their tax bills payable in calendar year 2024. This is well under the current rate of inflation and only about 1.4% higher than what the district levied in taxes in 2018.

The increase in the tax rate is not indicative of the increase in actual taxes paid by taxpayers. A tax rate is determined as follows:

TAX LEVY / PROPERTY ASSESSMENT (EAV) = TAX RATE

A tax rate can increase either by an increase in the amount of taxes charged to residents OR by a decrease in the overall value of the EAV as determined by the County Assessor. In the case of District 162, the Tax Levy (the amount charged to residents) only went up 1.3% since 2020 but the value of property (EAV) decreased 14% in that same time period. Therefore, the tax rate went up 18.2% in that time. However, the amount of taxes actually paid by residents on the District 162 portion of their tax levy only went up 1.3%. Conversely, if the assessed valuation of property in Rich Township does go up significantly for the 2023 levy (collected in 2024), it will ironically result in the tax rate going down. However, as stated above in Question #7, we project the District 162 portion of the 2023 levy, collected in calendar year 2024 will increase by 2.8%. So, utilizing the variable of tax rate is misleading in determining the amount that a resident’s tax bill will change from year to year.