Tax Policy

Metro Baltimore's most important business group says it will shift its focus to regional cooperation and "start talking about issues that aren't politically safe" such as municipal tax sharing and cross-boundary housing policies.The Greater Baltimore Committee's "primary focus" will be finding ways "for solving problems on a regional basis," GBC President Donald P. Hutchinson said yesterday. The switch promises to stoke the debate on what duties satellite counties owe to Baltimore.Founded in 1955 to spawn building projects in downtown Baltimore, the GBC has been regional in name but parochial in practice.

MAYOR KURT L. Schmoke's responsiveness to the year-long investigation of the city's housing crisis by Sun reporters John B. O'Donnell and Jim Haner is encouraging. The whole system of liens on abandoned and deteriorating houses has to be rethought and overhauled.The Sun's series demonstrated how the current lien process ends up bankrupting impoverished homeowners and small investors. Worse yet, communication among the various branches of city government is so haphazard that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice M. Rivlin warned Maryland legislators yesterday that cutting taxes wouldn't help attract businesses if public education and the state's infrastructure suffer in the bargain.Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee, the Fed's No. 2 official questioned the underlying premise of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's planned 10 percent decrease in the income tax rate: that the cut was needed to compete with neighboring states."Personally I'm a little skeptical about the usefulness of competitive tax reduction between states in drawing business into the state," said Rivlin.

WITH THE APRIL 15 filing deadline, many American couples discovered again that taking on a legal commitment to each other can cost dearly at tax time.The "marriage penalty" doesn't hit every couple, but why should it hit any? Tax policy has profound social consequences, and the effects of failing marriages -- and of the failure of parents to marry -- are taking a heavy toll at all levels of society.The "marriage tax" is felt largely by two-income couples, increasing their tax burden beyond what it would be if they remained single.

WASHINGTON -- When word spread recently that Republican leaders might water down a big tax break for families with children, not a peep of protest was heard from the business lobbyists who scrutinize most tax changes with a microscope.Instead, it was the Christian Coalition that turned up the heat, firing off letters of protest to Senate Finance Committee Republicans.A day later, the plan vanished. "They weren't just a vocal advocate for that tax credit -- they were the principal sponsors," said Stephen Moore, an economist who attended key early GOP strategy sessions on the federal budget overhaul.

MOSCOW -- Western oil companies that reached deals in Russia last year suddenly found themselves subject to an after-the-fact $5 a barrel export tax.A Western business executive who moved to Moscow this month was shocked to discover after he had arrived that the State Customs Committee was levying a 60 percent duty on his clothes and furniture -- and would extract another 60 percent when he moved out of the country.Ostensibly to protect local agriculture, Russia this month slapped a 15 percent duty on most imported food.

THE "hold" -- the power of any senator to block a vote on a bill or a nomination for any reason -- may be the purest example of unnecessary congressional power run amok.For weeks, Sen. Bill Cohen, Republican of Maine, put a hold on every White House appointment to the agriculture department until he obtained federal aid for Maine potato farmers last week.The Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, has a hold on the nomination of George Weise to be customs commissioner until the Customs Service agrees to give a career job to a Dole protege.

WASHINGTON -- For all the talk about President Clinton's TC shaky beginning, a scorecard on what he's done in his first two weeks, or reaffirmed he will do, compared with campaign promises already broken, is overall a favorable one.In the two issues that have created controversies -- his nomination of Zoe Baird to be attorney general and his determination to end discrimination against gays in the military -- he actually kept promises made in the late campaign.Baird's...

WASHINGTON -- As President-elect Bill Clinton searches for ways to cut the budget deficit, invest in the economy and provide tax "fairness," keep an eye on your gasoline pump.At both the federal and state levels, the sales tax on gasoline is an increasingly attractive answer for politicians seeking a quick infusion of cash without resorting to a broad-based rise in the income tax.The federal government has more than tripled its gasoline tax in two big bites over the past decade, while the Maryland General Assembly has approved four separate gas tax increases over the same period.

Two years ago, a measure that appeared on the county ballot to limit the growth of property taxes seemed like a sure winner. One pre-election poll predicted it would carry two-thirds of the vote.But on election day, the initiative lost with barely 45 percent of the vote, the victim of fierce campaigning by the Maryland State Teachers' Association (MSTA) and a local group, Fairness for All County Taxpayers (FACT).A similar measure is on the Nov. 3 ballot, but it seems to be attracting little attention.