Daywatch: This year’s tax season features EV credits and shrinking refunds
Good morning, Chicago.
Have you filed your taxes?
With less than one month to go before the April 18 deadline, the majority of the nation’s 168 million tax filers are once again scrambling to download software, organize receipts and call their accountants for last-minute help.
Procrastinators may find what early filers already know: Tax year 2022 is not producing as many happy returns as in previous years due to a number of changes, including the expiration of some pandemic-era tax breaks.
From a reduced child tax credit to the end of a charitable tax break that allowed for an above-the-line deduction last year, the changes are most likely to erode refunds that have become the norm during the pandemic.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Robert Channick.
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Ex-ComEd lawyer testifies request to put Juan Ochoa on utility’s board came from Michael Madigan in bribery trial
The former general counsel for Commonwealth Edison testified Wednesday that he helped allies of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan hunt down jobs in law firms and at the utility itself, including a coveted position on the company’s board of directors.
In one of the central allegations in the government’s case, Tom O’Neill, ComEd’s former chief lawyer, testified that Madigan wanted former McPier chief Juan Ochoa to get placed in a rare vacant seat on the company’s board in late 2017 and that CEO Anne Pramaggiore was behind the move because Ochoa’s resume came from Madigan.
Public safety and environmental concerns are at the forefront in 10th Ward runoff
One is the grandson of a steelworker who was also a union leader. The other is the daughter of a steelworker father and a seamstress mother.
Both candidates vying to represent the 10th Ward — the massive region that hugs the Indiana border and was once home to scores of industrial businesses on Chicago’s Southeast Side — proudly promote their local bona fides as they campaign to replace another longtime resident turned politician, Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, who is retiring after two terms on the City Council.
With a Pink Floyd cover band, we listen to ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ on its 50th anniversary
“The other day I called Kyle Stong and asked if I could come over to his house and listen to ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ with him,” writes Christopher Borrelli. “It was like I was in junior high again. Except, I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. But the album turns 50 years old this month, and I didn’t want to celebrate alone.”
“The Dark Side of the Moon,” the eighth studio album of Pink Floyd, the record that made them superstars (and turned that prism-pyramid album cover into a pop relic), is about nothing less than the struggle of life and the insignificance of existence in the face of a vast cosmos, with all the trauma, enlightenment and history that suggests.
Chicago Sky’s Elizabeth Williams joins earthquake relief effort with her Turkish club
After years of playing in the Turkish Women’s Basketball Super League, Chicago Sky forward Elizabeth Williams said the crisis struck her and her teammates regardless of their home countries.
“A lot of us have played in Turkey for a really long time, so there are ties there that are kind of hard to explain,” Williams said. “It’s just so close to home and we spend so much time here.”
Review: In ‘Reasons: A Tribute to Earth, Wind & Fire,’ Black Ensemble brings the hits
Chicago really doesn’t talk enough about Maurice White, the life force of the amazing band Earth, Wind & Fire, a long-lived, tightly wound and singularly eclectic entity that sold 90 million records, achieved global fame and reinvented itself numerous times.
“Fans of Earth, Wind & Fire are turning the latest Black Ensemble tribute show into quite the hit; the Friday night performance I attended was packed to the gills,” writes critic Chris Jones.
