This presentation was given at Loyola, DePaul and Adler Unversities in September 2015. For more information on tax increment financing and how it impacts your community, contact the TIF Illumination Project (http://www.tifreports.com) at tom@tifreports.com.
3. 3
Key Policy Questions
1. Under what circumstances do we give public $ to private
business?
2. Who plans what for whom? AKA, What defines
“community development”?
3. Are we broke?
4. Who’s watching our back? Need for new leaders.
5. 5
What are TIFs?
• Created by municipality (state
statute)
• Designed to subsidize some
business project in “blighted” or
under-served area
• Captures “incremental” property
taxes ABOVE base when district
was created
• Only for hard costs
• Lasts 23 years
• Supposed to be spent where
collected
6. 6
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).
8. 8
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
9. 9
TIFs Used to support commercial projects in
these “Blighted” Areas
40 S. Halsted
Apple Store
13. To sum up:
TIFs = property taxes
Increment $ collected by TIF
Run by city (mayor)
Lasts 23 years
Blight & “But for” conditions
Hard costs
Supposed to be spent where
collected
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Authors plead "Our
message is simple:
'Please, please, if you're
going to offer incentives,
don't give them to every
firm that asks -- Don't!
Ninety percent of the
time they don't work, and
handing them out after a
company has already
located in an area
without them makes no
sense at all."
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1. Help us research
2. Help us litigate
• FOIA Action
• TIF Legal Project