Illinois’ property tax system is a convoluted process that few people can navigate on their own. There are short 30-day windows to appeal to the various government agencies that control the amount of your assessment. Professional representation is usually required to navigate this complicated system which involves filing timely appeals to the local Assessor, County Board of Review, and ultimately going to Court or the State of Illinois’ Property Tax Appeal Board.

There is no upfront cost to file an appeal. BMI works on a contingency basis, so you pay only if we're successful in saving you money. On top of that, BMI offers free initial consultation. We don't bill for our time; we bill for our results.

We first conduct a preliminary analysis of your property to see if you have a case. Not every property has a case for appeal. As much as we all dislike paying taxes, it is true that some properties are fairly assessed. If, on the hand, we decide you have a case, then there is a high chance that you will save money. BMI boasts a a better than 90% success rate on cases we appeal. 

The most important item we need to appeal is to know the correct PIN. Once BMI has your PIN, we can pull the publicly available records to and start our preliminary analysis. At this point we start preparing your appeal and we would ask you for more documents. For example, if you have recently purchased the property, we would ask for your purchase documents. If it’s a leased commercial property, we would ask for current income and expense documents. 

This depends on what county the property is located. For example, Cook County has two windows to appeal property taxes. Appeals can go to either the Cook County Assessor’s Office and/or the Board of Review. BMI tries to file at both agencies wherever possible. For other Chicagoland counties such as Lake, DuPage, and Will, appeals must go directly to their Board of Review. 

What is consistent among all counties is that even if we don’t get the desired result at the Board of Review, we still have the option to take it up another level and either go to the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board (PTAB) or Circuit Court. 

The duration of the appeal process various depending on each individual government agency. Appeals to the Assessor or the Board of Reviews are generally resolved in a few weeks or months. Appeals to PTAB can take three to five years to complete. 

The appeal window starts when your township assessor posts assessment results for your township. From this moment we have 30 days to file the appeal. Don’t worry if you have missed a deadline –one thing that is certain in the State of Illinois is that property taxes will go up. There is always another opportunity to appeal in a few months.