Tax System

You're a relatively small landscaping company, a computer repair outfit or the local muffler shop. You may think you have little leverage in Annapolis, where the fat cats frolic. You are so wrong! You rocked. You and a legion of tax resisters - from Montgomery County and elsewhere - tailored and reshaped Gov. Martin O'Malley's tax reform proposal. Instead of taking even modest steps toward broadening the base of the sales tax, legislators left it alone almost entirely. There had been hope that modernizing the system - extending the sales tax to cover services and making the income tax more progressive - might be a byproduct of the effort to erase a $1.7-billion budget deficit.

By granting tax benefits on a case-by-case basis to projects like the Exelon building, the government is essentially staying in the development business ("Harbor Point tax deal challenged," June 3). The City Council is greenlighting projects whose proponents make a good case that Baltimore's tax system makes their projects uneconomical. It's heady stuff for the City Council to be wined, dined and lobbied by these powerful interests. Yet to really get Baltimore going, the city should shock the system with a 50 percent tax reduction financed by long-term bonds and let the market decide where the growth will be. Families would flock to the city and developers would fall all over themselves to provide homes, retail, office and other infrastructure development without special tax breaks.

THE LAST time there was a debate about taxes, Democrats wanted to make sure "the rich" paid their "fair share."As usual, Republicans lost the debate because they could not counter the presupposition that government, no matter how big, is good, and that those who want to keep more of what they earn are greedy and lacking compassion.The debate about taxes (which should begin now and continue through the 2000 presidential election) should focus on what is fair about big government's demands for our money.

Rep. John Delaney's new bill offering corporations that repatriate their offshore profits deeply discounted taxes if they invest in a new infrastructure bank, praised in your editorial ("Road work ahead?" May 28), would only serve to reward the very firms that have successfully gamed the tax system in ways that cost the U.S. Treasury $100 billion a year. Mr. Delaney's system of allowing corporations to bid on the tax rate they will ultimately pay opens the system to even more gaming.

The county wants to fix its antiquated fire tax system but doesn't know how."If someone has a bright idea, we want it," said James H. Eacker. He is chairman of a 14-member committee appointed by County Executive Charles I. Ecker and Councilwoman Shane Pendergrass, D-1st, to look at the fire tax system and make recommendations for improving it.The committee will hold public hearings on the fire tax at 7:30 tonight in the county office building and at 7:30...

Leaders of Maryland's 800,000 Catholics are urgin lawmakers to restructure the state tax system in an effort to provide financial relief both for the poor and for the non-profit services they use.At a press conference in Annapolis yesterday, church leaders renewed their annual plea for tax changes, saying the recession has had a particularly devastating impact on the poor."

WASHINGTON -- Rich and poor rushed by the millions to meet the annual tax deadline yesterday, but after both paid their share of the nation's $1.8 trillion dues to Uncle Sam, the income gap between them remained as wide as ever.The tax system does not cause the great divide in income nor does it narrow the gap dramatically, according to a series of recent studies.Although the system takes more from the rich than the poor, it still leaves the richest richer and the poorest poorer. That trend has become a central issue in this year's presidential campaign.

If you've ever leased a vehicle in Maryland, no matter how great a deal you think you got, you got taken for a ride.Don't go running back to the dealership. It wasn't the dealer in this case who fleeced you.The culprit is the state of Maryland, which hits unwary consumers who opt to lease with a tax premium of up to $1,000 or more for making that choice.Auto leasing is already complicated enough, which makes it ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous dealers. Momma might not have raised any dummies, but she also didn't have to contend with such terms as capitalized cost reduction, residual values and money factors before she drove a new Chevy Impala off the lot back in the good ole days.

Tax-reduction plans for the middle class are sprouting faster than Democratic presidential candidates, but Maryland's only representative on Congress' tax-writing committee says time is running out for a plan to pass Congress this year.Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he would like to see a bill passed to remedy problems with the tax system.But it will be difficult, he acknowledged, to reach an agreement on such a contentious issue before Congress adjourns at Thanksgiving.

A bill that supporters say would put "truth" in Maryland's property tax system without changing the amount people pay passed the House of Delegates yesterday.Critics suggest the legislation will lead to higher taxes, and the bill's fate in the Senate is uncertain.Under the bill, which passed 100-38, local governments would no longer tax residential and business properties on 40 percent of their assessed value. Property would instead be taxed at 100 percent of its value, and local tax rates would be cut to 40 percent of what they are now.The result would be that people would pay the same amount in taxes, but their tax rate would be lower.

In his remarks to the Greater Baltimore Committee's annual meeting Wednesday night, T. Rowe Price Chairman Brian C. Rogers noted a contradiction in how the world sees Maryland as a place to do business. On the one hand, it is universally recognized for its top-ranked school systems and universities, skilled workforce, research activity, potential for innovation, and great quality of life. On the other, it frequently winds up toward the bottom of rankings of business competitiveness — most recently, by CEO Magazine — largely because of our tax system and regulatory environment.

What if Congress was bought and sold by corporate interests? What if tax loopholes and regulatory exemptions were bought and sold in the halls of Congress? What if both major political parties have become ineffective at addressing the issues of the day? What if the Constitution was actually designed to restrict government but we continue to elect people to Congress and the presidency who ignore it? What if our use of drones kill more civilians than terrorists and create more enemies for America?

I would like to respond to "No amount of spin can explain Obama's abundant failures" (letter, Aug. 2). The letter states that the country is not better off than it was four years ago. Now, I know telling people that things are really, really bad and that it's all President Obama's fault is Fox News 101 mantra, but if you examine the facts, things are gradually getting better. If we can step into the "way-back" machine and return to the Fall of 2008, the economy was hemorrhaging jobs, financial institutions were reeling with bad debt, foreclosures were running in the millions.

Your recent editorial on the elections in Europe states that you believe Americans are now ready to embrace tax increases rather than voting for "conservatives and further cuts to government spending" due to the "widening gulf between the haves and have-nots, the 1 percent and the 99 percent" ("Rejecting austerity," May 9). Such misguided statements make for superb political rant, playing on President Barack Obama's continued class warfare rhetoric which he hopes will blunt criticism of his abysmal economic record.

I heard from a self-described Maryland millionaire. His name was Les. He was kind of cranky. He put the hate on me for Tuesday's column about state Sen. Bobby Zirkin (Democrat and defender of millionaires), and Les condemned the Maryland Senate for raising the tax rate on households, like his, with annual incomes of $500,000 or more. "If it's wrong to balance the budget on the backs of the poor," Les said, "then it's wrong to balance the budget on the backs of the rich. " I guess that means Les dislikes our progressive income tax system, where the taxable rate rises along with taxable income.

Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson says a survey by her office last year found that 55 percent of taxpayers don't think they have any rights when dealing with the IRS. Only 9 percent knew correctly that they did. Olson says on her blog that Congress passed three pieces of legislation since 2007 giving taxpayers greater protections. She writes: “As a result of legislation, we have taxpayer rights, but no one knows what they are. And if taxpayers don't know what their rights are, how can they claim them?

GOV. PARRIS GLENDENING once again has reiterated his doubts that Maryland's economy can rebound strongly enough in the next few years to make an income-tax cut possible. There's already a $200 million structural deficit looming in next year's budget picture, and making enough reductions in services to cover that gap, plus accomodating a tax cut of a similar magnitude, isn't politically realistic at this time.Still, if Mr. Glendening and legislative leaders want to pursue an income-tax reduction, there is a way to do it without running the perilous course just described.

MOSCOW -- Now that President Boris N. Yeltsin has been safely re-elected, there's a debt to be paid -- by Russian taxpayers.Someone has to pay for Yeltsin's estimated $11 billion in campaign promises, such as back wages and restitution to depositors of failed banks.Tax collection has tumbled to such dangerously low levels that on Sunday the International Monetary Fund postponed this month's $330 million credit to Russia.The decision was taken as the state tax service acknowledged that tax revenues were 12 percent -- about $4.7 billion -- short in the first half of this year.

The three letters to the editor published in the December 27 edition of The Sun dealing with the recent series on the Homestead Property Tax Credit lead me to believe that either I or the writers of these letters are totally out of touch with what is going on in America, not just in Baltimore and Maryland. Bob Price states that tax codes should be "...simple, straightforward methods to generate revenue fairly and transparently. " Amen to that. But then he proceeds with the position that to accomplish this: "Programs that legislators deem to be worthwhile and affordable should be reviewed as part of the budgetary process, and each program's funding should be increased, decreased or suspended depending on the value of the program and the ability of the government in any given year to fund the program.

The decline of America's middle class can be charted directly. In the three decades after World War II, the median wage (smack in the middle) grew rapidly, right along with productivity gains. Even as late as 1980, the richest 1 percent of Americans received only about 9 percent of the nation's total income. But starting in the 1980s — and increasingly since then — the economy has made the rich far richer without doing squat for the vast middle. The median hourly wage has barely grown, if you take inflation into account.