How is the personal property replacement tax money distributed to local governments?
The proceeds from these taxes are placed into the Personal Property Replacement Tax Fund to be distributed to local taxing districts. The total collections are divided into two portions. One portion (51.65 percent) goes to Cook County. The other portion (48.35 percent) goes to downstate counties. The Cook County portion is then distributed to the taxing districts in Cook County on the basis of each district’s share of personal property tax collections for the 1976 year. (For example, if total taxes collected by all districts were $1 million and District A collected $35,000 of that total, District A’s share of any future distributions would be 3.5 percent.) The downstate portion is distributed similarly, except that the collections from the 1977 tax year are used to calculate each district’s share of the distribution. This percentage is called the district's “allocation factor.”
