The conference annually distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue to member universities. Yet it does not have to pay property taxes thanks to a 2000 Illinois Appellate Court ruling in the case called Big Ten Conference Inc. v. Department of Revenue. Is this fair? Of course not. Illinois has the highest median property tax rate in the nation, according to a 2016 analysis by CoreLogic. When some property owners are exempt, such as these universities, then their share of the burden falls to the rest of us.