Owner of ‘Sixteen Candles’ home paid more than $200K in property taxes over past decade

That’s why they call them taxes. If they were easy, they’d call them something else.

The Evanston home where the 1984 coming-of-age comedy “Sixteen Candles” was filmed sold for $1.135 million on June 28. And although parting with a home of cinematographic significance may have been difficult, parting with the home’s enormous property tax burden could have been a big relief.

Evanston is part of Cook County, which has some of the highest property tax rates in Illinois. And Illinois has the second highest property taxes in the nation.

Over the past decade, the owners paid over $217,000 in property taxes, according to documents from the Cook County Clerk’s office. The 2017 property tax bill alone was more than $23,400, even after receiving a small homeowner exemption.

And while 3022 Payne Street’s property taxes seem inordinate, it’s possible that a more accurate assessment would have made them even higher. In 2017, the county taxed the home as if it were worth $913,000, 20 percent below the eventual sales price.

One house’s sale price and assessment do not themselves prove a pattern, and the lower assessed value compared with the eventual sale price could be due in part to an assessment system that incorporates older sales in arriving at a house’s market value. Nevertheless, state data do show that in Evanston, higher-value homes often have lower assessment levels than lower-value homes. According to the most recent data from the Illinois Department of Revenue, Evanston has a price-related differential, or PRD, of 1.08 for the class of residential properties that includes small apartment buildings, condominiums and single-family homes. A PRD higher than 1.03 indicates regressive assessment – in other words, high value homes are assessed at a lower rate than their low value counterparts.

If local governments continue to levy higher and higher property taxes, they should at least distribute the burden of those taxes accurately and fairly, and not assess lower-value properties at a higher rate than higher-value homes. Of course, ever-increasing property taxes can be difficult even for relatively well-off taxpayers. When owners of high value properties have to bear a larger share of the property tax burden than they currently are, they will have an even more compelling reason to join the Illinois exodus.

Local governments should get their finances in order and provide property tax cuts all around, while also working to fix a broken assessment system that too often punishes those who are least able to pay.