May 19, 2026 – While tens of thousands of Chicago property owners are reeling from soaring taxes, some 87,000 Cook County homeowners are owed tax refunds by a broken system.
Apparently, ongoing tech upgrades by Tyler Technologies, the Texas-based firm the county contracted with a decade ago to modernize its property tax software, are part of the problem.
However, there are other major problems linked with the unfinished tech upgrade, with tens of thousands of tax refunds going unpaid, and the county is having trouble communicating how much revenue taxing bodies should expect, and when the money will arrive.
To add to the confusion, the Cook County Board of Review, a three-member tax appeal body, received a record 290,000 appeals – the biggest number for a year when Chicago was not being reassessed.
After the board is finished hearing, ruling on, and processing those appeals, the final adjusted assessment value numbers must be sent back to Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, shipped downstate to the Illinois Department of Revenue, then back to the Assessor to apply exemptions.
The appeals are then sent to the Cook County Clerk for additional calculations, and then to the Treasurer for final mailing of the tax bills. The process at each office can take days or weeks.
“Our commitment is to ensure that no taxpayer is left shouldering an inaccurate or inflated assessment,” he said.
As a result of this tech boondoggle, it is likely that the second installment of the 2025 property tax bills will not be issued by the Treasurer on August 1. The second installment of the 2024 tax bill was not mailed until November 2025.
County officials noted that delays from prior years often take a few cycles to rebound because assessments, appeals, and final calculations happen on a rolling basis.
One homeowner, $10,498 in limbo: A case study in bureaucracy
The Home Front traced the timeline on one senior-citizen property owner’s delayed refund based on a whopping 21.5 percent 2024 tax increase on a Lincoln Park 3-flat. In 2023, the property owner, living on a fixed income, applied for a long-awaited Senior Tax Freeze Exemption with the Cook County Assessor. The exemption was finally approved with the issuance of a “Certificate of Error” in January 2026. Here are the facts:
• Income documents and required forms filed with the Assessor in 2023 showing the senior’s net income was under $65,000 – the qualifying limit for the freeze.
Unfortunately, no action was taken by the Assessor in 2024. The total 2023 tax bill – after the owner’s Homeowner Exemption ($662) and Senior Exemption ($529) were applied – was $27,628.
• More documents and required forms were filed again in 2024 showing the property owner’s net income was under the $65,000 qualifying limit for the freeze. Unfortunately, the Assessor took no immediate action.
After Homeowner and Senior Exemptions were applied, the property owner paid a total 2024 tax bill of $33,565.94. The first installment was $13,409. The second installment rose to $20,157.
The total 2024 tax increase was 21.5 percent. To cover the increase, the property owner’s lender increased his mortgage payment to $7,883 a month from $5,826 to cover the tax escrow shortage.
To cover the 21.5 percent tax increase, the senior’s lender spiked the monthly mortgage payment to $7,883 from $5,826 to cover the escrow shortage.
• The Senior Freeze finally was granted in January 2026 based on documents submitted in 2023. As a result of the Senior Freeze, the property’s assessed value was lowered from $173,001 to $130,945.
The assessment reduction created by the Senior Freeze approval resulted in a reduced 2024 total property tax bill on the 3-flat of $23,068 – a savings of $10,498.
• A Certificate of Error was issued by the Cook County Assessor in January 2026. In February, the lender issued an escrow refund of about $1,605 and lowered the borrower’s monthly loan payment to $5,446.
• Technically, the property owner is due a 2024 tax refund from the Cook County Treasurer. Refunds typically take 60 days. Based on the senior citizen’s ballpark calculations, the Senior Freeze should have resulted in a 2024 real estate tax refund of about $10,498. Meanwhile, the property owner has been patiently waiting for this refund for more than four months.
If you pay your property taxes late, the Treasurer charges you an interest rate of .075 percent a month. That’s 9 percent a year. When the $10,498 tax refund eventually arrives in the mail more than four months late, the senior citizen is wondering if the check will include four months’ interest of 3 percent to cover his losses. That’s about $315 in lost interest.
Based on reporting by the Chicago Tribune, an estimated 20,000 approved Certificate of Error refunds worth more than $46 million are bottlenecked at the Cook County Treasurer’s office.
It is easy to imagine that hundreds, maybe thousands of these refunds are owed to senior citizens living on fixed incomes. This reporter asks: Is it possible for the Treasurer to expedite refunds to property owners who recently earned the Senior Tax Freeze Exemption?
According to a scathing new study by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, real estate taxes in Chicago and the county have grown at double the rate of inflation over the past three decades. As a result, home and business owners are being forced to pay an ever-greater percentage of their annual earnings to local governments.
Over those three decades, inflation rose by 91 percent, while average wages grew by about 161 percent.
