PROPERTY TAX COMPLIANCE

Simplifying property tax compliance nationwide with iterative design

Challenge

County governments depend on property taxes for the majority of their revenues. In many counties, owners can claim a tax break called "homestead exemption" for their primary residence to reduce their taxes by 30% or more.

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Some property owners cheat and claim homestead exemption on more than one property. Since most additional properties are in different counties nationwide, and most county data is of low quality or outdated, assessors could not find the fraud. 

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Action

Working with customers, engineers and data analysts, I led the iterative design and implementation of a data analytic product that combined 99% of all the real property data in the United States.

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This required participatory design sessions with key customers to understand which data were valuable and why. 

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Result

To date, 100,000s of parcels have been analyzed and over $14m in product sold. Customers have found over $50m in new revenue sources, with Cook County, Illinois alone finding over $26m.