ChitownLiving | Chicago Real Estate + Life

In the course of representing a Seller in the sale of his property, I discovered that there was no Homeowner Exemption listed on his tax bill.   The Cook County Treasurer’s Office recently posted the 2nd installment of the 2005 tax bill.  All property tax exemptions in Cook County, are reflected in the 2nd installment tax bill.  If you know your tax parcel ID number, which is listed on your tax bill, deed, and/or title commitment to name a few, I would suggest you go to the following website: www.cookcountytreasurer.com.  If you owned and resided in your property as of January 1st, 2005, and the property is your principle residence, you are entitled to the Homeowner Exemption for the tax year of 2005.  You can check the status of your exemption at the aforementioned website.  If you are entitled to the Homestead Exemption but did not receive the Exemption, you can file a Certificate of Error with the Cook County Treasurers Office.  The Treasurers Office will recalculate your tax liability, this time applying the homestead exemption, and send to you a refund for the difference.  The Certificate of Error form is not listed online but feel free to either contact this office, or visit the Cook County Assessors Office to request the form.  The Assessor’s Office can issue the Homeowner’s Exemption Certificate of Error for at least 3 YEARS prior to the current tax year.  Thus, you may be entitled to a refund on prior years taxes as well.  You will have to submit some documentation to verify that you did, in fact, reside at the property in question on or before January 1st, 2005 for 2005 taxes or before January 1st, 2004 for 2004 taxes, etc.  A list of the requirements is attached to the Certificate of Error. I prepared the Certificate of Error for my client.  A couple minutes could earn him hundreds of dollars.  I strongly recommend you take a second to look this up.  This may be the easiest money you can earn.