(35 ILCS 200/10-115)

Sec. 10-115. Department guidelines and valuations for farmland. The Department shall issue guidelines and recommendations for the valuation of farmland to achieve equitable assessment within and between counties.

The Director of Revenue shall appoint a five-person Farmland Assessment Technical Advisory Board, consisting of technical experts from the colleges or schools of agriculture of the State universities and State and federal agricultural agencies, to advise in and provide data and technical information needed for implementation of this Section.

By May 1 of each year, the Department shall certify to each chief county assessment officer the following, calculated from data provided by the Farmland Technical Advisory Board, on a per acre basis by soil productivity index for harvested cropland, using moving averages for the most recent 5-year period for which data are available:

(a) gross income, estimated by using yields per acre as assigned to soil productivity indices, the crop mix for each soil productivity index as determined by the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois and average prices received by farmers for principal crops as published by the Illinois Crop Reporting Service;

(b) production costs, other than land costs, provided by the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois;

(c) net return to land, which shall be the difference between (a) and (b) above;

(d) a proposed agricultural economic value determined by dividing the net return to land by the moving average of the Federal Land Bank farmland mortgage interest rate as calculated by the Department;

(e) the equalized assessed value per acre of farmland for each soil productivity index, which shall be 33-1/3% of the agricultural economic value, or the percentage as provided under Section 17-5; but any increase or decrease in the equalized assessed value per acre by soil productivity index shall not exceed 10% from the immediate preceding year's soil productivity index certified assessed value of the median cropped soil; in tax year 2015 only, that 10% limitation shall be reduced by $5 per acre;

(f) a proposed average equalized assessed value per acre of cropland for each individual county, weighted by the distribution of soils by productivity index in the county; and

(g) a proposed average equalized assessed value per acre for all farmland in each county, weighted (i) to consider the proportions of all farmland acres in the county which are cropland, permanent pasture, and other farmland, and (ii) to reflect the valuations for those types of land and debasements for slope and erosion as required by Section 10-125.

(Source: P.A. 98-109, eff. 7-25-13.)