Don?t like the added taxes Gov. Martin O?Malley is proposing? Not to worry. Delegates have proposed taxes on dozens of other services to choose from. In a six-hour hearing Saturday, the House Ways and Means heard the case for new or higher taxes on dozens of items and services:
The list includes consumer service such as rental cars, auto repair, barbers, hair dressers, shoe cobblers and dating services, and professional services such as engineering, architecture, tax preparation, exterminators, interior decorating and direct mail advertising.
Lobbyists, business owners and associations representing all the potentially taxed services sought to kill the measures.
“They?d be considered as amendments to the governor?s bill,” said Committee Chairman Sheila Hixson, who said “we were surprised that no citizens showed up” to testify against the tax hikes or expansions. She said that was true even on the well-publicized hearings earlier in the week.
John Sullivan, a CPA with offices in Anne Arundel and Howard counties, called it “a very black day for Maryland” tax accountants and said it was “unfair, unjust, and unreasonable,” especially since legal services were excluded from the tax.
The tax opponent who drew the most laughter was long-time lobbyist Bruce Bereano, representing the Maryland Coalition of Tattoo and Body Piercing Establishments. “It?s a tax on culture,” said Bereano. Humans have been decorating their bodies for thousands of years. “It?s a way of life.”
Architects, engineers, surveyors, landscaper architects and interior designers were out in force to oppose a new tax on their services. Broadening the sales tax to those services raises $139 million, the largest single item among the 31 categories of services added that will bring in a total of $540 million.
Mark Hasslinger, an Annapolis architect who heads the state Council of Design Professionals with 22,000 members, said, “We will have no choice but to pass these taxes on to our clients.”
Co-sponsors Jim Gilchrist and Craig Rice, Montgomery County delegates who serve on Ways and Means, hope some parts of the sales tax expansion will pass. “We?ve tried to establish a sense of fairness,” Rice said.
Extending the sales tax to services came up briefly during the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee work session Saturday. Chairman Ulysses Currie, D-Prince George’s County, said members only began considering the possibility that morning. While no specific bills have been introduced in the Senate, he said public hearings would be held on any bill amendments.
But Currie remained vague on which services he and other committee members might back.
“We thought we should look at more than the governor’s proposal,” Currie said. “What I think is a good idea is what can pass.”
Sen. David Brinkley, the Senate Republican leader who vocally opposes all tax increases, urged the committee to consider only the four services proposed by O’Malley ? health club memberships, tanning, massage and real estate management.
“I can see, all of a sudden, the landscape contractors of this state ? and justifiably so ? pelting us,” Brinkley said.
