Seven years ago, Karim Chatriwala turned the key to open his version of the American Dream. The Pakistani immigrant opened up a Subway sandwich storefront in Morton Grove, a north suburb of Chicago, where he lives with his wife, two children and parents. With a wide network of friends and a place of worship right down the street, Chatriwala says the community has a lot to offer. But the business owner also said that if his property taxes do not decrease, his increasing debt might force him to move away. He estimates he pays $1,200 per month and is barely keeping afloat. So Chatriwala went to …

Click through the photos above for an inside glimpse into the world of property taxes at the Cook County Board of Review. This additional office is unique to Cook County's property tax system in the state of Illinois. Created as an extra layer of appeals for the property taxpayer, the board is comprised of three elected commissioners and their staff. One commissioner, Daniel Patlak, took some time to give Patch a personal tour for our property tax series, "Making Sense of Your Property Tax."

At lunchtime on a windy Wednesday in December, the movers and shakers of a northern Chicago suburb met at an elementary school with two attorneys and a couple pizza pies. You could call it a property tax pizza party, though the pizza came after the paperwork. It was time for the Property Tax Appeals Cooperative (PTAC) meeting, a semi-annual gathering for local taxing bodies in Niles Township that began in 1998. The cooperative, which includes about 15 school districts, public libraries, park districts and village governments, is trying to ensure that they get all the local tax money they …

Joel Byron, 51, was hunched over tiny numbers in the back office of his business property, a one-window storefront in the northwest suburbs. Surrounded by stacks of papers, the small business owner thumbed his way through records of correspondence with the Cook County Tax Assessor’s Office like pages in a family photo album. “Here’s a letter from October,” he said. “Oh, wait! Here’s the one from November. … This one is mine again. … And here’s the follow-up response two weeks later.” To small business owners like Byron, the amount they owe in property taxes each year is not just one more line…

When your property tax bill arrives in your mailbox soon, chances are you’ll be squinting to figure out the difference between your property value, your assessed property value and your equalized assessed property value. After about four months of poking around the Cook County property tax system, one thing is clear here at Patch: It’s confusing, complex, and unwieldy, so much so that there’s not one particular kink in the system that we can point our fingers at to say, “aha, here’s the problem!” And it’s not just us. Ask elected officials, the county assessor’s spokesperson, the assessor’s …