Current through Register Vol. 48, No. 38, September 20, 2024
a) The following details the receipt and
processing requirements for farmland reviews made in accordance with Section
10-120 of the Property Tax Code [35 ILCS
200/10-120] . The County Farmland Assessment Review
Committees may object to and offer alternate recommendations to farmland
procedures and valuations initially certified by the Department of Revenue for
the next succeeding assessment year. Such objections must be made by August l
of the year preceding the assessment year in question. In all cases, the
Department is required to rule within 30 days and direct the Chief County
Assessment Official to implement the ruling. Because of the severely compressed
time frame involved and in the interests of ensuring that all county reviews
are accorded the same impartial and thorough consideration, certain basic
receipt and processing requirements are imperative. The written procedure set
forth below is therefore designed to arrive at those receipt requirements and
processing steps necessary to guarantee compliance with both the letter and
intent of the law.
b) Two written
copies of such objections and alternatives must be submitted to the Department.
To meet the required 30 day review deadline, the original farmland brief
submitted must be complete as to the objections listed and must be timely
filed.
1) A short introductory paragraph
should enumerate the bases for the objection. If, for example, there are three
primary reasons why the county objects to the valuations offered by the
Department of Revenue, they should be numbered consecutively and briefly
explained in this first paragraph.
2) The main body of the written presentation
should follow and explain each of the objections or problems enumerated in the
first paragraph. Appendix references should be made as appropriate. Proposed
alternate assessment values and procedures should then be presented and
explained.
3) All charts, graphs,
tables, calculations, and other exhibits should be contained in the appendix.
Each item in the appendix should be individually designated (such as:
Attachment I, II, III) in order that the Analyst reviewing the data can refer
from the written text discussed above to the appropriate item in the
appendix.
4) Objections made to the
Department must be approved by a majority of the County Farmland Assessment
Review Committee. The brief submitted (or a cover letter) must contain the
signatures of that majority. In addition, the signatures submitted must be
attested to by the Chairman of the Committee as being those of the County
Farmland Assessment Review Committee membership. In lieu of these signatures,
the Department will accept a Certified Copy of the minutes of the meeting at
which the vote was taken to submit an appeal to the Department. The Certified
Copy must contain the signature of the Chairman of the Committee.
c) No clear cut criteria exists
for determining in advance the type and amount of evidence necessary to
positively demonstrate the correctness of the objection. However, certain types
of data afford a better opportunity for review and demonstration of a
successful objection to the Department's assessment values and expected
averages.
1) Objections to the Department's
certified values are more likely to carry the necessary burden of proof if they
are founded upon recognized and easily verified sources such as detailed soil
survey maps, property record cards (or abstracts of assessment and acreage data
contained therein) or alternate productivity, yield or income data taken from
acknowledged educational or research authorities in the agricultural
profession.
2) The crop and
farmland expected averages certified by the Department are based upon soil
types identified within the counties, as well as farmland use. These averages
serve as guidelines or starting points for helping the Department evaluate
farmland assessment compliance. The Department recognizes that in some
instances basic compliance with the Department's assessed values and procedures
may result in substantial deviation from the expected averages as certified.
However, County Farmland Committee objections to expected averages certified
must carry the burden of proof in order to be successful.
3) Challenges to the weighted productivity
indices (P.I.s) and equalized assessed valuations (EAVs) used by the Department
should be based upon detailed soil survey maps. A county that believes the
percentages of soil assumed by the Department of Revenue to exist for each
productivity index range to be incorrect, should be able to demonstrate via
soil survey the actual percentages by the same P.I. ranges. Because a detailed
survey estimates the kinds of soils and their respective percentages of the
total types within the county, it becomes a relatively simple matter to match
these soils with their appropriate productivity index. By totalling the percent
of soils having P.I.s within the same productivity ranges used by the
Department, it might be possible to demonstrate, for example, that the
Department of Revenue based its crop land average on soil percentages that were
incorrect.
4) An objection might
also be made upon the premise that the land use acreages utilized by the
Department are incorrect or out of proportion with one another. For instance,
it might be argued that the County has fewer total farmland acres than assumed
by the Department, or that too many acres are attributed to crop land rather
than pasture or other farmland. This could have the impact of creating
artificially high expected averages. The recommended approach for this
particular challenge would involve acreage and assessment data abstracted or
summarized from a complete set of Property Record Cards for farm property in
the county. A certified abstract of the information from the Property Record
Cards would be needed showing for each township the number of acres in each
land classification and their assessed value. This information would have to be
auditable; the Department would verify that the abstract totals agreed with the
assessment book totals. Examples of selected parcels might also be appropriate
to demonstrate why the land use percentages (tillable vs. nontillable for
example) are not what would be expected. The county would have to demonstrate
in their alternate recommendations exactly how the crop and farmland expected
averages would be affected by the correct acreage amounts.
5) The County Farmland Review Committees
could also object to the base data (i.e., productivity indices or agricultural
economic values (AEV)) provided by the Farmland Assessment Technical Advisory
Board and utilized by the Department. In all such cases, the challenge must be
based upon the same procedures and time frames (e.g., same 5 year period for
farmland mortgage interest rate) as the base data. Any alternate net income,
AEV, or productivity index data presented should be sufficiently detailed so as
to permit analysis of how the corrected values were derived.
