New Procedure in Illinois
There is a new Illinois law affecting recording and searches of state tax liens. Effective Jan 1, 2018, all state lax liens are no longer recorded at the county level by the county recorder; they are now recorded by a new agency – the State Tax Lien Registry. The law, which was passed July 2018, created the State Tax Lien Registry which is managed by the state’s Dept. of Revenue. The Dept. of Revenue was the entity sending the lien documents to the counties for recording, so essentially they are now handling this function themselves electronically via the new Registry.
There are several issues that I see.
1) Limitations on Name Searches
The Registry provides online access at from the home page at www.revenue.state.il.us. Look at the right edge under Quick Links and click on Lien Registry. A search by name or lien number apparently includes pre-2018 liens, but a name search is limited to only a 7 day span.
So moving forward in 2018, a name search without knowing dates will be a very time consuming process. Per our research, so far all of the IL county recorders are continuing to provide search services for pre-2018 liens.
2) Answers to Specific Questions on an Existing Lien.
The Tax Lien Registry offers a voice line for questions on specific liens, but only the person who is a party of the lien may call and ask questions. This means CRAs, PIs, or researchers involved with a high level of due diligence will not be able to use this service.
There is a 5 minute YouTube video about these new procedures posted by the Illinois State Tax Lien Registry found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DITvksZs2JU
Basically the video is saying that the county recorders should no longer be contacted for searches. This fact could present a problem if a researcher is doing a pure name search or has a question on the results of a name search.
