Maryland lawmakers grappling with multibillion-dollar budget shortfalls are weighing proposals to tax the rich.
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“Everything is broadly on the table,” said Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chair Guy Guzzone (D-Howard).
“I don’t think anything’s off the table,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chair Vanessa E. Atterbeary (D-Howard). “This is the session to do something if we’re going to do it,” she said of the impending General Assembly session in January. “You know, some folks say, ‘wait till next session.’ I say rip the Band-Aid off, and let’s just solve the problem.”
Maryland’s perplexing economic indicators — historically low unemployment but also stagnant growth — have not delivered the revenue needed to fund Democratic lawmakers’ ambitions. And while a flood of federal pandemic aid disguised the underlying problem, the help evaporated and leaders find themselves confronted with the politically fraught prospect of finding new money.
A coalition of 30 advocacy groups, the Maryland Fair Funding Coalition, has seized the moment, throwing $250,000 behind ad campaignsduring the last few weeks of the year to build public support for changes they say would yield $1.6 billion more annually in revenue. Some liberal county executives who have long sought a tax code that shifted more tax burden to the businesses and the wealthy are advocating for it too.
Proposals under consideration by top Democratsvary from a comprehensive top-to-bottom shift of tax burden from the middle class to higher earners and corporations, to piecemeal ideas to tax online poker games or raise fees for government services. The prospect of tax increases are all but certain to land with a thud among Maryland Republicans, who are outnumbered 2 to 1 by Democrats.
