(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 Assessment Technical Advisory Board, on a per acre basis by soil productivity index for harvested cropland, using moving averages based upon the most recent 5-year period for which data are available:
        (a) gross income, estimated using annual yields per
    
acre, as assigned to soil productivity indices for the major crops grown in this State, for each soil productivity index as determined by a Farmland Assessment Technical Advisory Board representative from the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics in the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, and annual average prices received by farmers for principal crops from associated publicly reported data;
        (b) non-land production costs for each soil
    
productivity index as calculated by the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics in the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois;
        (c) net return to land, for each soil productivity
    
index, which is calculated by subtracting non-land production costs from estimated gross income;
        (d) agricultural economic value (AEV) determined by
    
dividing the net return to land by a farmland income capitalization rate, which shall be determined based on the calculation year rate under Section 2032A of the Internal Revenue Code, or its analog in cases when the rate is not published by the Farm Credit Bank district that contains Illinois, plus 3%; except that, in cases when that calculated rate exceeds 10%, the income capitalization rate will be 10%; and, in cases when that calculated rate falls below 8%, the income capitalization rate will equal 8%;
        (e) 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;
        (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. 104-468, eff. 6-16-26.)