Angry Chicago Resident Pays Property Tax With $1 Bills

By now everyone knows that Chicago is one of Americas biggest urban basket cases. It’s a city rife with poverty, police abuse, onerous regulations, corruption, gang warfare, and massive public debts that will probably never be repaid. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the people who live in that area have a lot BS from the local government to deal with.

One of the worst aspects of living in the Chicago metropolitan area, is the rapidly increasing property taxes. Illinois property taxes are already the highest in the nation, and they’re even worse in Chicago. Jeff McGrath, the owner of an automotive business, recently responded to these outlandish tax increases by paying them in $1 bills.

In 1999 his residential property tax was $2,500. This year it inexplicably jumped 26%, from $9,100 to $11,600, not to mention the property tax for his business. So he walked into the treasurer’s office carrying a bag with $9,995 in singles and a check for $1,456 (presumably the bank ran out of $1 bills) for his business, and another bag filled with $5,757 in singles for his residential tax. He plans to deliver his second installment next month in the same manner, in an effort to teach his local government a lesson. “We are fed up with getting nickeled and dimed,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

Of course, the staff at the treasury office are not pleased. According to McHenry County Treasurer Glenda Miller, only a handful of employees work at her office, which has to deal with 138,500 tax bills. She claims that paying a property tax in $1 bills only hurts her employees. I have to admit, that sounds really sad. So here’s the world’s smallest violin playing just for the tax collectors.