Commercial Property Taxes in Lake County, Illinois
What commercial and industrial buildings actually pay in property tax across Lake County, town by town — and why the tax rate you look up is a poor guide to the tax bill you pay.
Small commercial and industrial buildings in Lake County pay roughly $2.10 to $5.95 per square foot per year in property tax. Vernon Hills sits at the high end, Round Lake at the low end. Figures are for buildings of about 1,000–20,000 SF, tax year 2025.
The tax rate is not the tax bill
Most owners — and plenty of brokers — look up a town’s tax rate and assume a high rate means a high bill. In Lake County that is close to backwards.
A tax rate is the money a town needs divided by the value of everything in it. A town without much property wealth has to set a higher rate to fund the same schools, fire district and library. A wealthy town raises more at a lower rate. Rate and property value move in opposite directions, and they largely cancel out.
| Barrington | Zion | |
|---|---|---|
| Assessed value per SF | about $45 | about $30 |
| Tax rate | about 7.3% | about 10.5% |
| What the building actually pays | about $3.25/SF | about $3.15/SF |
Zion’s tax rate is roughly 41% higher than Barrington’s, and a Zion building pays slightly less per square foot. Anyone comparing the two towns on rate alone reaches exactly the wrong conclusion. The rate on its own is not a reason to buy in one town or avoid another — what matters is the rate and how the county has assessed your specific building. The second one is where an appeal has leverage.
What buildings actually pay, town by town
Median property tax per square foot for commercial and industrial buildings of roughly 1,000–20,000 SF, tax year 2025. Vernon Hills carries about 2.8 times Round Lake’s tax load per square foot — and almost none of that difference is the rate. It is assessed value.
| Town | Tax per SF | Tax rate | Assessed value per SF |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vernon Hills | $5.95 | 8.6% | about $69 |
| Long Grove | $5.55 | 9.1% | about $61 |
| Buffalo Grove | $5.10 | 9.4% | about $54 |
| Mundelein | $4.05 | 9.7% | about $44 |
| Libertyville | $3.30 | 7.5% | about $44 |
| Barrington (Lake County portion) | $3.25 | 7.3% | about $45 |
| Grayslake | $3.15 | 10.6% | about $30 |
| Zion | $3.15 | 10.5% | about $30 |
| Lake Zurich | $2.95 | 7.4% | about $40 |
| Antioch | $2.85 | 9.7% | about $31 |
| Gurnee | $2.70 | 9.2% | about $30 |
| Wauconda | $2.50 | 8.5% | about $30 |
| Waukegan | $2.40 | 8.2% | about $29 |
| Round Lake | $2.10 | 9.3% | about $23 |
What moves a specific building inside its town
A town median is a starting point, not your number. Four things move a specific building:
Which tax code you are in
Rates vary inside a single town, sometimes sharply. In Waukegan the rate runs from about 6.1% to about 11.1% depending on which districts serve the address. Two similar buildings a few streets apart can carry meaningfully different bills.
How the county assessed it
This is the larger of the two levers, and the only one you can challenge. An assessment is an opinion of value, and opinions can be appealed.
Reassessment exposure at sale
A sale can reset the assessor’s view of value. A building under-assessed for years can carry a materially higher bill for its buyer — which is the buyer’s problem, and therefore the seller’s pricing problem.
Incentive classifications
Cook County’s Class 6B and similar programs can cut an industrial building’s assessment sharply. Lake County works differently, but the principle holds: classification is worth checking before you assume the bill is fixed.
How these figures are calculated
For every commercial and industrial parcel of roughly 1,000–20,000 SF in the towns listed: tax per square foot = (assessed value × the aggregate tax rate for that parcel’s tax code) ÷ building square feet.
| Figure | Source |
|---|---|
| Assessed values, building sizes, tax codes | Lake County GIS Division, tax parcel records |
| Aggregate tax rates by tax code | Lake County Clerk, “EAVs, Rates, and Districts by Tax Code,” tax year 2025 |
The method reproduces a known building exactly. 1881 Industrial Dr, Libertyville — assessed at $205,424, tax code 12022, rate 7.405216%, 6,822 SF — computes to $2.23 per square foot, matching the building’s actual figures.
Lake County does not record a building size for every parcel, so these medians are drawn from the parcels where it does. Treat them as a reliable guide to how towns compare, not as a census of every building.
Lake County’s records do not cleanly separate industrial from retail and office property — a large light-industrial park in Vernon Hills is classified as commercial. These figures therefore cover all small commercial and industrial buildings, not industrial alone.
Barrington figures cover the Lake County portion only; Barrington extends into Cook County, which assesses on an entirely different system. Tax year 2025 is the most recent year with rates certified by the Clerk.
How this index has changed
This page is updated quarterly and keeps its history. Prior editions are listed so any figure cited from this page can be traced to the edition it came from.
| Edition | Published | Basis | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edition 1 | August 2026 | Tax year 2025 rates; 14 Lake County towns | $2.10–$5.95 per SF |
Want to know what your building actually pays?
A town median is a starting point. I’ll pull your parcel’s actual assessed value, tax code and rate, tell you what it pays per square foot, and tell you straight whether there is a case for an appeal.
Jason Bitton is a commercial real estate broker with RE/MAX Commercial in Libertyville, IL — #1 RE/MAX Commercial Broker in Illinois (2022, 2024, 2025) — serving Lake County, the North Shore, the O’Hare corridor, and the Chicago suburbs.