According to a report, leftist Sen. Tammy Duckworth has apparently found a number of loopholes and tax exemptions that lowered her property taxes on her Illinois home effectively to zero, and thus hasn’t paid any property taxes since 2015.
One of those tax breaks concerns disabled veterans. Unlike other states, the rules in Illinois are not income-based, so any disabled veteran qualifies for the tax break, no matter how wealthy they are. Since 2015 Duckworth and her husband have evaded $42,000 in Cook County property taxes, although the senator alone earned nearly $500,000 in each of 2019 and 2020.
“What we have done is to create all special sorts of categories – veterans, disabled people, senior citizens – and all of those exemptions administered by the county basically undermine the integrity of the property tax system,” says Laurence Msall, president of Chicago tax watchdog group the Civic Federation. “We grant people relief regardless of their income situation, and the rest of the community has to pay more. It’s unfair, it’s very hard to monitor, and it’s hard to authenticate who’s getting the value. Is it the needy people, or is it a large giveaway?”
It’s a large giveaway.
Duckworth has refused to comment on the story, but through a spokesman, Duckworth said she “has always believed that everyone should pay their fair share in taxes and that those who served this nation in uniform deserve and should claim the benefits they earned.”
Especially affluent leftists.