Tax Bill Information

The 2008 tax bills, payable in 2009, will be mailed by the DuPage County Treasurer’s Office on April 29, 2009. The bills are payable in two installments, on June 1, 2009, and September 1, 2009. Most property owners receive the tax bill even if their mortgage companies pay the bills.

We continue to receive calls from residents wondering whether their property taxes will be reduced in response to the downturn in the real estate market. Unfortunately, that most likely will not happen. Property taxes are driven by the spending of your local taxing bodies, such as schools, villages, libraries and park districts. If assessments were frozen or reduced, but spending by taxing bodies increased, taxes would still go up.

As a reminder, assessors are required by law to use the prior three years of sales in determining assessments each year. The 2008 assessments, upon which the most current tax bills are based, were calculated using sales that occurred between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2007. The real estate market was still going strong in 2005 and 2006, and began to level off in 2007. Assessments in Wayne Township required a 1.05 equalization factor for 2008 to raise level of assessments to 33 1/3% (one-third) of market value, as required by law. The equalization factor did not cause taxes to increase. If this factor had not been applied to all properties, the tax rates would have been five percent higher, and the tax bills would be the same.