The Tax Man Cometh

Last week we received an exceptional letter from the Cook County Tax Appraisers Office. It went like this: "You are receiving this letter to show the reassessed value of your home and what it means to your taxes. Next year however, your home will be reassessed again without the homestead exemption as the exemption is being phased out. Your taxes could (read as: WILL!) go up exponentially. Please contact your state representative to pass a measure to reinstate the homestead exemption." Um, yeah. So basically what the tax man is telling us is that we better prepare for a HUGE tax bill next year. As if paying somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/3 the cost of our mortgage just in taxes isn't fun enough, let's raise the taxes some more and still not do anything about the horrendous roads or the schools. Believe me, we plan on appealing this, but if taxes go up to 1/2 of our mortgage, we won't be able to afford a house anymore. Matter of fact, no one will be able to afford that. The sad thing is that we put a hefty down payment on the house, but with the price of houses being what they are, that down payment was small comparatively speaking. If housing prices were anything like they were when we were kids, our down payment would have bought the house outright, but now it's just a drop in the bucket and we are "upside down" in value. The saddest part to me is that we can afford the mortgage itself with ease, but our taxes are rising hand over fist with no end in site, and that we can't afford. I don't remember signing any paperwork when we bought the house that said "please sign away any and all future paychecks to taxes". It's just not right.