Cook County unveils one-stop tax website

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Updated: March 19, 2012 11:46AM

Starting April 1, homeowners trying to research their property tax history won’t need to visit multiple Cook County websites to piece together the information they’re seeking.

A new Cook County Property Tax Portal will pull together information from six different county offices to provide records of ownership, tax payments, exemptions, appeals, tax refunds and tax delinquencies. The website will be www.CookCountyPropertyInfo.com.

When the Property Tax Portal goes live, owners may enter their Property Index Numbers or addresses and get five years of tax history, in linear form and on a single screen, without having to surf from website to website. The single source will allow the homeowner to determine what is owed, what was paid and what refunds might be available.

The new portal, announced by elected officials Thursday, compiles information from the Treasurer’s Office, the Cook County Assessor’s Office, the Recorder of Deeds, the County Clerk’s Office and the Board of Review, among others.

The one-stop website was announced by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Treasurer Maria Papas, along with Assessor Joseph Berrios, Clerk David Orr, Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore and the three members of the Board of Review.

“We are making one of the most crucial areas of county government — information about people’s homes and property — more sensitive to their needs, more convenient for their use, more efficient and more transparent for all of our residents,” Preckwinkle said.

According to a news release, the site will allow residents to have online access to information they may never have known existed — such as appeal or exemption opportunities or liens placed on their properties.

“Any recorded document or transaction from every one of the 1.8 million parcels of homes, businesses and land in the nation’s second-largest county will find its way to the portal,” said Pappas, whose office was instrumental in the creation of the new website. “No more laborious trips from one website to another to find out what you owe, what you paid or didn’t pay, exemptions you should have, refunds waiting for you and so on.”

Currently, property owners who want to see the tax history of a home, business or land must visit the websites of up to six different county offices to “piece together” records. And much of it now only goes back one year.

“This portal makes the system as transparent as possible for anyone who owns property in Cook County,” said Berrios.

Clerk Orr said, according to the release, “Let’s finally take taxpayers out of the property tax pinball machine.”

The single screen shot will include ownership and liens from the Recorder of Deeds Office; payments and refunds from the Treasurer’s Office; prior tax bill status and delinquencies from the Cook County Clerk; and appeal information from the Board of Review.

The one-stop portal also will include a calendar of events and key dates.

The portal was financed from the budget of the Office of the Treasurer, at no additional cost to Cook County taxpayers, according to the statement.