PPP and taxes, taxes, taxes to be discussed at free Chamber legislative recap tomorrow

Registration is free for the Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Luncheon: General Assembly Recap taking place to Thursday, April 22 at noon. The Zoom presentation is expected to touch on various issues regarding state legislation, including three areas of taxation that the chamber has voiced opposition to increasing.

"In terms of legislation this year, obviously, was just different in terms of the pandemic," explained Mark Kleinschmidt, the Chamber's president. "The main focus of our assembly this years was pandemic issues and budget concerns from pandemic relief."

Kleinschmidt said he believed the impact to state revenues was not as bad as people once thought it might be.

"A lot of people were still able to get a paycheck." he said. "The federal stimulus money was a big, big help. It went directly to the government who used to it to fund COVID (19)-related expenses. The stimulus money went to the very successful Payroll Protection Program. (PPP), which allowed businesses to get cash they could use to keep people employed." 

Moving forward, he indicated there's three tax issues the chamber is probably going to talk about tomorrow:

Item number one was what he called the county progressive income tax (which now applies to all counties)," Kleinschmidt said. The tax, if enabled by Anne Arundel County, would establish brackets for income tax and it also authorizes increasing the rate of counties' income tax.

"The Chamber does not support that concept," the chamber president said. "At this time we don't need to raise taxes, given the fact we're just coming off of a recession."

"Another tax is the surcharge on the existing transfer tax for real estate transactions over $1 million. This was just for Anne Arundel County. The Chamber does not support that either for a couple reasons." 

He noted the fund for affordable housing, which the surcharge would go toward supporting,  doesn't yet exist 

"They're passing a tax to go into this fund that hasn't been set up," Kleinschmidt said, "That's sort of the cart before the horse. The other piece is that his will make real estate projects more expensive. 

"It will really hurt small businesses that want to expand. The chamber absolutely agrees that there's an affordable housing issue in the county, but there's no coordinated plan."

Finally the chamber is concerned about and opposed to the new state digital advertising tax. 

"It basically means they're taxing ads that are placed," he said. "We didn't support that, because whatever the tax is is going to be passed on to the consumer. Maryland would be the first state in the union to implement a tax on internet advertising."

He acknowledged lawsuits have been filed by some organizations to challenge the law's legitimacy. 

The Anne Arundel County Executive's office was not available to comment on their position on the tax issues at time of publication of this article. 

Also on the agenda for the Chamber, are concerns and discussion about the depletion of the unemployment insurance fund and possibilities premiums will go up. 

"We're watching that closely."

On a bright note, Chamber members are planning to attend their first in-person event since the pandemic started in May. 

"We're having a golf outing at the renovated Eisenhauer golf course," Kleinschmidt said. "They're going to be opening the course May 1. We've got a lot of buzz about it. People who played it over the years are  anxious to see what changed and top of that, just anxious to get out."