Property owners in Jefferson County, take note—your assessment equalization factor, a number integral to determining your share of the tax burden, has been updated. According to the State of Illinois, the director of the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR), the new figure stands at 0.9766. This new multiplier is set to impact taxes payable in 2024, and it is slightly down from last year's factor of 1.0000. The move is meant to facilitate equity among taxpayers by standardizing property assessments across the county and by extension, the state.
The process, which is shaped by legislation dating back to 1975, aims for properties to be assessed at one-third or 33.33% of market value, allowing for an even playing field when property taxes are levied across differing zones. When we look at properties, the assessments in Jefferson County are hovering over the one-third mark at 34.13%, which involves a basket of property sales from the years 2020, 2021, and 2022, as per the State of Illinois. Consequently, the temperatures of the real estate market in these years have played into this year's cooler equalization factor number.
If you're delving into the nitty-gritty of how this multiplier was decided, it springs from a comparison of property sale prices over the past three years, matched against the assessed values placed on the same by the county assessor. "If the three-year average level of assessment is one-third of the market value, the equalization factor will be one (1)," explains the IDOR, as stated by the State of Illinois. Should assessments fall short of or exceed that one-third mark, the equalization factor respectively rises above or dips below one.
