Business Tax

The grades for the year are in,and Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold has received a C- from an environmental group disillusioned with his handling of conservation issues. The Anne Arundel chapter of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters faulted Leopold, whom it had previously endorsed, for not living up to promises it said he'd made about enforcing environmental laws and regulations - and for what it called his "utter failure" to push for county funding for controlling polluted storm-water runoff.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans reached broadagreement yesterday on a sweeping, $245 billion package of tax cuts for families and businesses, increasing the likelihood that both houses of Congress will find common ground on tax relief this year.The centerpiece of the Senate GOP package is a permanent, $500-per-child tax credit for families, which was settled on only after days of behind-the-scenes wrangling, as Republicans sought to squeeze as many tax cuts as possible into a package that also had to fit in with broader, deficit-cutting targets.

Maryland Republicans are using radio and newspaper ads to tar three Democratic senators as tax-and-spend liberals in an effort to stop the legislature from overriding Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s veto of higher education funding and the planned veto of medical malpractice reform. State Republican Party Chairman John Kane said the party will be making more of the unusually public lobbying efforts in the two years before the next election in an effort to get legislators whose constituents voted heavily for Ehrlich to back the governor's priorities.

The Obama economic team's announcement this week that it wants more tax relief for small businesses is good news for the economy. Small business today is larger than big business - it earns more money and employs more people - and while Wall Street bailouts may be necessary to preserve capital and liquidity, they are also likely to raise the long-term tax burden of Main Street. If this happens, we will be hurting the very businesses that we need to pull us out of the recession. The predominance of small business in the American economy didn't happen by accident.

WASHINGTON -- Americans would not see any of the tax relief promised by House Republicans until after Congress acts to balance the federal budget, under a compromise being fashioned by Republican leaders.The new proposal would delay the tax cuts promised in the House GOP "Contract with America" until after Congress adopts legislation to produce a balanced budget by 2002. Congress also would have to complete the first year of spending cuts before tax cuts would be granted.If the compromise formula is adopted, Republicans would seek to have the legislation completed this fall -- in time for the first round of tax cuts to take effect next year.

As Anne Arundel Councilman Daryl D. Jones prepares to head to federal prison for failing to file his tax returns, a number of his constituents in his northern county district said they would like to see the Severn Democrat keep his seat — and return after he's served his time — even as his opponents clamor for his resignation. Kevin Poole, owner of Kevin's Barber / Beauty Salon, nestled in a strip mall along Telegraph Road in Severn, said as he cut hair Wednesday afternoon that he feels Jones is being treated more harshly because he's a black elected official.

Tax scofflaws in Maryland have two months to come forward and pay up without penalty through an amnesty program announced by Gov. Martin O'Malley on Monday. The amnesty runs through Oct. 30 and allows some Maryland residents and small businesses to pay back taxes free of penalty and at half the interest accrued. The program is being implemented under a law approved by the General Assembly this year and signed by O'Malley, a Democrat. About 177,000 individual and 18,000 business tax accounts are delinquent, adding up to as much as a half-billion dollars.

I enjoyed reading the interview with T. Rowe Price CEO James A.C. Kennedy appearing in Sunday's Business Section ("Keeping business humming requires striking right balance," Mar. 7). But as a business executive, I take exception to his statement to the effect that the tax situation in Maryland makes other states more appealing to business. Maryland offers many advantages over other states. Show me a state without an income tax, and I'll show you a state with lousy schools. Show me a state with below average taxes, and I'll show you a state with poor roads, no mass transit, few parks and protected open space, degraded environment, high college tuition, and no safety nets for the young, elderly and disabled.

Maryland businesses turned with gusto to making tax payments electronically in 1996.In fact, computerized filing has become the preferred method for a majority of Maryland businesses to transfer their sales tax and other tax payments to the state, says State Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein.In tabulating year-end sales and income tax collections for fiscal year 1996, which ended June 30, state officials found that about $4 billion, or 57 percent, of income withholding taxes and sales and use taxes were paid by electronic transfers.

Kevin Plank may have sold the first Under Armour shirts from the back of his car, but as his reach has grown, so too have his wheels: These days, he jets around the world, recently to five Asian cities in six days, but managed to get back home to Baltimore to watch a member of his celebrity-filled stable of athletes play in a game. That would be his 9-year-old son, James, playing in a Little League game in Baltimore County. Like any sideline dad, Plank showed off a few photos on his cellphone, scenes from a spring evening more Norman Rockwell than Under Armour, whose thumping ads feature glaring athletes seemingly in training not for a mere game but a coming apocalypse.