The House and Senate were scheduled for only perfunctory sessions this week, and our attention has been focused on bill filings. The deadline for introduction of substantive bills is February 26th in the House and February 15th in the Senate. To-date, substantive tax legislation is somewhat light, although a large number of "technical" or vehicle bills have been filed. These technical/vehicle bills make a n ...

The Illinois Department of Revenue and the Illinois Attorney General, in an ongoing joint criminal investigation, have recovered nearly $75 million in unpaid sales tax from gas station owners alleged to be involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the State. The investigation began in August of 2010. Most recently, two Chicago area accountants, Naveed Ahmed and his brother Asif Waheed, entered guilty ple ...

While SB 282 may have been defeated this past week, Chicago's Alderman Burke has now proposed a "Corporate Tax Disclosure Ordinance" as an amendment to Chapter 2-154 of the City's Municipal Code. The ordinance would require disclosure of extensive corporate tax return information for any publicly held corporation that makes application to the City for any "city action." A city action is defined as "any acti ...

SB 282, the corporate tax disclosure legislation, was defeated in committee this past Sunday afternoon by a vote of 3-6.  We would like to thank all our members in the business community who helped defeat this legislation and we would also like to thank Representatives Mautino, Zalewski, Sullivan, McSweeney, Harris, and Ramey who voted against SB 282 and supported the business community in defeating this an ...

The 98th General Assembly officially began at noon this past Wednesday. As we go into the first year of the two-year General Assembly session we wipe the legislative slate clean and start all over again. The Legislative Reference Bureau has begun posting proposed legislation for 2013 and we've begun our review. Committee work will begin shortly, and we'll be off and running. I wanted to take a minute to rem ...

It appears that agreed language to amend the Illinois False Claims Act will not be moved this week, but will be a spring session initiative. Since HB 6202 must first pass the House and the Senate will not be coming back into session until January 8th there will not be enough time for the Senate to take up the bill before the start of the new General Assembly.  Rep. Zalewski, our bill sponsor, has promised t ...

As we move into spring session and the new 98th General Assembly, the Governor and legislative leaders continue to look for new sources of revenue to fund State capital projects and to address the state's continuing budget deficit. As we discussed at our December Tax Institute meeting, we hear that a number of new taxes and fees have been thrown on the table for discussion by Governor Quinn and legislative ...

Fall veto session took an unexpected twist on Monday when word got out that Senate President Cullerton would be calling SB 282 this week-- a controversial, anti-business bill that would require publicly-traded corporations doing business in Illinois to file reports with the Illinois Secretary of State on which they would be required to disclose detailed information from their Illinois income tax returns, in ...