CHICAGO -- Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas today unveiled an innovative online tool that for the first time calculates year-to-year changes for each property tax bill and shows where tax dollars go.

The search tool at cookcountytreasurer.com is available as the due date of Friday, Dec. 1, approaches for property owners to pay Second Installment bills for the 2022 tax year.

“Taxpayers upset about how much they owe now have an easier way to find out where their money goes,” Pappas said. “People should pay attention to how the amount of money sought by schools and other taxing bodies, combined with changes to property assessments, affects individual bills.”

The new feature, “Where Your Money Goes,” is an online, educational display that provides a clear view of how much taxes owed on a property increased or decreased from one year to the next. It also calculates the money an individual property owner owed to each school district or other local unit of government in the past two years.

“This information has never before been so easily available,” Pappas said.

Higher tax bills this year were in part the result of increased levies — the amount of money sought by taxing districts — and a shift of the tax burden onto homeowners from businesses as a result of reassessments in the northern suburbs.

Bills also increased partly due to a provision called recapture, which took effect in the 2021 tax year due to a change in state law. Recapture allows schools and other taxing bodies to recover money that was refunded to property owners whose assessments were lowered by the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board, state courts or county offices.

Access the dashboard by clicking here.