Back on May 8, Rep. Mark Kirk voted against a Democratic amendment offering first-time homeowners a $7,500 tax credit to be paid back over 15 years. But while he opposed this effort to assist average Americans in buying their first home, it appears that Kirk himself has saved tens of thousands of dollars through a tax credit available to certain homeowners here in Illinois.
In September 2001, he and his wife purchased a home in the northern end of Highland Park, IL, for $375,000. A couple of months later, the Kirks entered the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency's "property tax assessment freeze" program. As some of you will remember, Rezko associate Stuart Levine took advantage of this program as well. A Sun-Times article on Levine's explained how the tax break works:
The idea is to offer tax breaks to encourage people to renovate historic homes.
First, you make sure your home meets the state's criteria for "historic." Then, you do the construction work, making sure the project is up to state standards.
If the state agrees, you get a "certificate of rehabilitation." That freezes the assessed value of your home -- the figure your property taxes are based on -- for eight years. In the next four years after that, your assessment is gradually ramped back to normal.
According to the IHPA, Kirk and his wife received their "certificate of rehabilitation" on December 28, 2001.
To see how much they've been saving through the program, I took a look at their annual tax bill over the past five years (available at the Lake County Assessor's Office) and compared it to what they should be paying. According to the assessor's office, property tax rates apply to one-third of the market value of a home, minus any exemptions. This was the calculation I used to determine the "tax bill without tax break."
If you scroll to the right using the table below, you'll see that over the past four years Kirk has been paying less than 10 percent of what he would be billed if he were not in the program, for a total savings of $35,126 since 2003.
I'm still trying to figure out the ins and outs of the "assessment freeze" calculations. For instance, I'm not sure what happened between 2003 and 2004 to cause the significant drop in Kirk's tax bill.
Also, I want to be clear that -- as with Levine -- Kirk did nothing illegal here. I simply think it's noteworthy that he voted against a tax credit for first-time homeowners while taking part in an eight-year program that has cut his property taxes by 90 percent. Voters might find it interesting as well. After all, the Sun-Times piece on Levine noted that "other taxpayers pay a little more in taxes to make up for people who have the tax breaks."
I'll keep you updated on any additional information I can put together. And if any readers have further insights, please let us know in the comments section.
FOLLOW-UP ITEM: More On Kirk's Property Taxes
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