Lake County Chief County Assessment Office: Veteran Exemptions

The exemptions are the State's; the Illinois entries explain them. In Lake County the Chief County Assessment Office administers them (18 N. County Street, 7th Floor, Waukegan; 847-377-2100), and every application goes through its Smartfile e-filing portal: EX01 for a first application, EX03 for the yearly renewal. Township assessors help in person. What the pages say, and get right. The standard exemption (section 15-169) takes $2,500 off at 30% to 49%, $5,000 at 50% to 69%, and up to $250,000 of equalized assessed value at 70% or more, and covers a World War II veteran regardless of rating. A renewal is mailed each year to everyone else. An unremarried surviving spouse keeps it and can move it to a new home after selling the old one. The returning veterans exemption (section 15-167) is $5,000 for the year of return and the year after. The specially adapted housing exemption (section 15-165), up to $100,000, is applied for through the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs, with forms from the Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Building 135; 847-689-4153), and renewed yearly. What the pages leave out. Section 15-169 also reaches the surviving spouse of a veteran whose death was service-connected and who receives Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, and a surviving spouse whose veteran would have qualified but never applied; ask for the exemption on those grounds too. The 2018 brochure. "Lake County Services for Military Veterans and their Families", still linked from the Clerk's Veterans Services page, describes the pre-2023 exemption: it requires an honorable discharge, limits it to homes under $250,000 of equalized assessed value, and calls the 70% tier a full exemption. Since taxable year 2023 the statute defines the veteran by VA-certified disability compensation, not the discharge, and exempts the first $250,000 of any home. It also gives the Veterans Assistance Commission's old address.