The document explains Tax Increment Financing (TIF) as a municipal tool created to support business projects in underserved areas by capturing increased property taxes over 23 years. In 2012, Cook County had 435 TIFs, collecting $723 million in revenue, with a significant portion claimed from the city of Chicago. The document also discusses the lack of impact on individual property tax bills despite substantial TIF revenue accumulation and highlights the existence of unspent TIF funds.

1. July 18, 2013
Tom Tresser

2. 2
What are TIFs?

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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

5. Better Government Association 5

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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

9. Where are TIFs?
TIF 101 9

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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 2011 = $723 MILLION

13. 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 13

14. • 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…

16. How Much Revenue Have TIFs Collected?
16
Ouch!

17. How Much Revenue Have TIFs Collected?
17

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What are TIFs?

19. 19

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This spreadsheet has 4,588 rows!

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22. TIF 101 22

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

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25. 25

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

27. Is YOUR
community
a TIF winner
or loser?
27

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THE WARDS OF LOGAN SQAURE

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If you would like your own copy of this presentation that
shows all the data from this ward as well as examples
from the TIF Hall of Shame, please visit The TIF Data
Store @ http://tinyurl.com/TIF-Data-Store. The TIF
Illumination Project is 100% volunteer driven but we
have serious monthly expenses to operate the
CivicLab, our home, plus we’d like to build an online
platform to make this information easy to access.
Thanks!
Contact = info@civiclab.us
www.civiclab.us
www.tifreports.com