The document provides an overview of Tax Increment Financing (TIF), explaining that it is created by municipalities to support business projects in under-served areas by capturing increased property taxes. As of 2012, there were 435 TIF districts in Cook County, generating significant revenue, including $723 million for the year. It also discusses the impact of TIFs on property tax bills and highlights the large unspent TIF funds at the end of 2011 and 2012.

1. August 6, 2013
Tom Tresser

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What are TIFs?

4. 4
What are TIFs?
• Created by municipality (state
statute)
• Boundaries cross political and
community boundaries
• Designed to subsidize some
business project in “blighted” or
under-served area
• Captures “incremental” property
taxes ABOVE base when district
was created
• Lasts 23 years

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What are TIFs?
Under state law, areas proposed for TIF designation
must possess numerous blighting factors to be
eligible:
• Age
• Obsolescence
• Code violations
• Excessive vacancies
• Overcrowding of facilities

6. Better Government Association 6

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How Do TIFs Work?
When the TIF is created,
the city tallies up all the
property taxes
generated by district in
that year (called the
"base" amount). After
that, all property tax
increases above the
base (the "increment")
are channeled to the TIF
district.
The property taxes
collected from
properties inside the
district BEFORE the
district was created
that go to units of
government stays
FLAT for the life of the
TIF (23 years).

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Where are TIFs?
• All over Chicago and Cook
County = 435 TIFs in 2012
• 154 in city of Chicago
{Was 163 - 9 terminated in 2012}
• Additional 281 in suburban
Cook County

11. Where are TIFs?
TIF 101 11

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Where are TIFs?

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How Much Revenue Do TIFs Collect?

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How Much Revenue Do TIFs Collect?
2012 TOTAL TIF REVENUE FOR COOK COUNTY
City of Chicago
TIFs diverted $457 MILLION
Suburban Cook County where
83 municipalities have TIFs
TIFs diverted $266 MILLION
TOTAL FOR 2012 = $723 MILLION

15. How Much Revenue Do TIFs Collect?
TIFs extracted $454 million in 2011.
That # is 53% of the TOTAL amount
of property taxes that went to the city
for its operations!
TIF 101 15

16. How Much Revenue Have TIFs Collected?
16
Ouch!
Source: Cook County Clerk

17. How Much Revenue Have TIFs Collected?
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18. • We are told that TIFs have NO impact on our property taxes.
• This bill is from a property inside the Englewood TIF.
• It shows “0.00” impact on this person’s bill. Nothing.

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The civics books
say our property
taxes are distributed
like this…
But in 2011 our
property taxes in
Chicago were
REALLY distributed
like this…

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Click here to open
the 163 PDF
annual reports.
One by one.

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THE CITY HAD
$1.7 BILLION IN
UNSPENT TIF
FUNDS AT THE END
OF 2011 and 2012!

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What are TIFs?

25. You can get this full presentation online at the TIF Data Store at
http://tinyurl.com/TIF-Data-Store. The full presentation contains this data:
- how many TIFs in the ward
- estimation of TIF property tax extraction from TIFs in the ward for latest
year
- if a TIF is 100% or close to 100% in ward, lifetime property tax extraction
- how much money left in those TIF accounts FROM the ward
- what projects funded by TIFs in the ward
- examples from the TIF Hall of Shame
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