7 Illinois properties rank among nation’s top 100 property tax bills

Though most of the top 100 property tax bills came from New York, the state with the second most entries was Illinois. The 13th highest bill in the country belonged to Exelon’s nuclear generating station in Byron, Illinois, totaling $36.5 million in 2016.

A newly released list of the 100 most expensive property tax bills in America contains seven properties in Illinois. CommercialCafe, a commercial real estate blog, assembled the list using public records and found the country’s top 100 most expensive property tax bills for 2016. Most of the list comes from properties in New York City.

Among the seven Illinois properties, five are in Chicago – however the two non-Chicago properties, located in Byron and Channahon, were the most expensive of the Illinois entries. And after New York, Illinois had the most properties crack the top 100, beating out other states on the list including New Jersey, Minnesota, California, Texas, Michigan, Nevada and Virginia.

The most expensive Illinois property tax bill – and the 13^th highest in the country – belonged to the Exelon Nuclear Generating station in Byron, and totaled more than $36.5 million in 2016. Exelon’s tax bill ranked 13^th in the country and was just $57,000 less than the Time Warner Center in New York City, according to CommercialCafe’s report.

The second priciest Illinois property tax bill was for the ExxonMobil Joliet Refinery in Channahon which paid nearly $29.3 million in 2016. Exxon’s property tax bill ranked the 26^th most expensive nationwide, narrowly edging out 520 Madison Ave, a Midtown-Manhattan skyscraper, according to CommercialCafe.

The complete list of Illinois property tax bills on the Top 100 include:

• 13^th Exelon Nuclear Generating Station, Byron ̶ $36,576,768
• 26^th ExxonMobil Joliet Refinery, Channahon ̶ $29,294,513
• 28^th Willis Tower, Chicago ­̶ $28,453,830
• 40^th Woodfield Mall, Schaumburg ̶ $24,130,398
• 55^th 300 East Randolph, Chicago ̶ $19,074,574
• 74^th Water Tower Place, Chicago ̶ $16,451,972
• 75^th Aon Center, Chicago ̶ $16,424,059

The General Motors building in New York City paid the most with a 2016 property tax bill of more than $71.6 million, according to the CommercialCafe report.

The Land of Lincoln’s recurrence on this list is not surprising. Illinois has some of the highest property taxes in the nation. The areas with the highest property taxes in Illinois are the collar counties around Chicago, with homeowners in Lake County facing the very highest in the state and some of the highest nationally with a median property tax bill of $7,000 annually. And with property taxes like these, it’s no wonder why nearly 1 in 5 Illinois homeowners are seriously underwater on their mortgages.