News from MarylandReporter.com
The Maryland Business Tax Reform Commission has canceled its meeting Tuesday and may not even meet next week to put the finishing touches on a report that advises against instituting a new form of corporate taxation called “combined reporting.”
“We have a draft of the report,” said commission chairman Ray Wacks, budget director for Howard County. “We’re just doing some wordsmithing.”
“We’ve made our decisions” at the last meeting Nov. 16, and “we’ll probably not have another meeting,” Wacks said.
The only open question is whether the four members of the 18-member commission who voted in favor combined reporting – including two senators on the Budget and Taxation Committee -- will produce a minority report to be delivered to the governor and legislature.
Combined reporting is a system of accounting that taxes corporations on all their sales in Maryland, regardless of where subsidiaries or headquarters are based. The staff of the Tax Reform Commission, who work for Comptroller Peter Franchot, found that in calendar years 2006 and 2007 some larger financial and retail companies would pay more taxes, resulting in $90 million to $135 million more in state revenues. But preliminary results for 2008 show that combined reporting would produce $13 million to $51 million less in state taxes.
Staff director David Roose, who leads the staff of the Board of Revenue Estimates in the Comptroller’s Office, said it was not viewed as productive to bring the commission back into session to view editorial changes to a document they had all commented on.
Roose has other important matters on his mind this week. He’s preparing for the Board of Revenue Estimates Dec. 15 meeting that establishes the official revenues the governor must use in drafting the budget to be submitted to the General Assembly in January.
--Len Lazarick
Len@MarylandReporter.com
No comments:
Post a Comment