Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Maryland

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Maryland’s New Budget Boosts Tax Revenue and Equity

May 6, 2025 • By Miles Trinidad

The final budget adopted by the Maryland General Assembly shows progress in advancing tax equity in the state while boosting state revenues to address the state’s budget deficit. To help close a $3.3 billion budget deficit, Maryland legislators enacted much-needed tax reforms and progressive revenue raisers that help meet the state’s needs while making the […]

ITEP Work in Action  

Testimony: ITEP’s Miles Trinidad on Maryland’s Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025

March 4, 2025 • By Miles Trinidad

This testimony was delivered to a joint session of Maryland’s House Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees on February 27, 2025. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on the Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025. My name is Miles Trinidad, and I’m a state analyst with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a […]

ITEP Work in Action  

Testimony: ITEP’s Matt Gardner Discusses How to Improve Maryland’s Tax Code at House Ways & Means Committee Hearing

February 27, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner

ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner submitted the written testimony below to Maryland’s House Ways & Means Committee on February 20, 2025. Video of his oral testimony is at the bottom of this post. Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony. My name is Matthew Gardner. I am a senior fellow at the Institute […]

ITEP Work in Action  

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Let’s End Corporate Tax Avoidance in Maryland by Enacting Worldwide Combined Reporting

February 22, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

Conservative revenue estimates released this week by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) project hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues for Maryland once you close the loophole that allows a small group of the world’s most aggressive global giants to dodge their responsibility to the people of Maryland. Read more.

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s Tax Plan Boosts Revenue, Increases Fairness

January 30, 2025 • By Miles Trinidad

Maryland’s Gov. Wes Moore put forward a tax reform plan that would make the tax system fairer, simpler, and better able to meet the state’s needs. The proposed changes to the income tax ask more of those at the top and provide an average tax cut for those earning less.

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Maryland’s Tax Reform Likely Won’t Cause Millionaire Migration

January 30, 2025 • By Nick Johnson

The moment Gov. Wes Moore announced his proposal to reform Maryland’s tax system, in part, by raising income tax rates on high-income households, opponents began predicting that wealthy people would respond by leaving. Experience from other states says that’s not the case. 

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Associated Press: Maryland Gov. Moore Includes Income Tax Increases for Wealthy Residents to Help Address $3B Deficit

January 16, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore released a budget plan Wednesday that includes higher income tax rates for taxpayers who make more than $500,000, as well as about $2 billion in spending reductions throughout state government to address a $3 billion deficit. Read more.

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Five Things to Know About Tax Foundation’s Critique of Maryland’s Worldwide Combined Reporting Proposal

April 1, 2024 • By Carl Davis, Matthew Gardner

Maryland lawmakers are considering enacting worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), also known as complete reporting. This policy offers a more accurate, and less gameable, way to calculate the amount of profit subject to state corporate tax. Enacting WWCR in Maryland would represent a huge step toward eliminating state corporate tax avoidance as it neutralizes a wide […]

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States Move to Tax the Top in 2024

March 20, 2024 • By Marco Guzman, Miles Trinidad

These forward-thinking states are demonstrating the wide variety of options for policymakers who want to raise more from the wealthiest people, rein in corporate tax avoidance, create fair tax codes and build strong communities.  

Maryland: Who Pays? 7th Edition

January 9, 2024 • By ITEP Staff

Maryland Download PDF All figures and charts show 2024 tax law in Maryland, presented at 2023 income levels. Senior taxpayers are excluded for reasons detailed in the methodology. Our analysis includes nearly all (99.2 percent) state and local tax revenue collected in Maryland. State and local tax shares of family income Top 20% Income Group […]

ITEP Work in Action  

Maryland Center on Economic Policy: Improving the Child Tax Credit Would Benefit More than 700,000 Marylanders

May 7, 2019 • By ITEP Staff

Refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit make an important difference for working families, together bringing more than 100,000 Marylanders’ family incomes above the federal poverty line each year. Maryland has built on these successful policies by supplementing the federal Earned Income Tax Credit with a state credit and extending […]

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Housing for All? Developers Bulldoze Taxpayers in Affordable Housing Debate

December 4, 2018 • By Monica Miller

Affordable housing advocates across the nation are attempting to address the problem at the local level, but they often face political and community opposition. These challenges are currently playing out in Baltimore, which is turning into a case study in how the best-planned civic interventions run into tough road blocks when it comes to tax increases versus moneyed special interest who seek to block those tax increases.

Maryland: Who Pays? 6th Edition

October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff

MARYLAND Read as PDF MARYLAND STATE AND LOCAL TAXES Taxes as Share of Family Income Top 20% Income Group Lowest 20% Second 20% Middle 20% Fourth 20% Next 15% Next 4% Top 1% Income Range Less than $24,100 $24,100 to $43,600 $43,600 to $65,900 $65,900 to $120,100 $120,100 to $238,800 $238,800 to $534,800 over $534,800 […]

Tax Cuts 2.0 – Maryland

September 26, 2018 • By ITEP Staff

The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called “Tax Cuts 2.0” or “Tax Reform 2.0,” which would make the temporary provisions permanent. And they falsely claim that making these provisions permanent will benefit […]

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Building on Momentum from Recent Years, 2018 Delivers Strengthened Tax Credits for Workers and Families

July 10, 2018 • By Aidan Davis

Despite some challenging tax policy debates, a number of which hinged on states’ responses to federal conformity, 2018 brought some positive developments for workers and their families. This post updates a mid-session trends piece on this very subject. Here’s what we have been following:

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Gas Taxes Rise in Seven States, Including an Historic Increase in Oklahoma

June 26, 2018 • By Carl Davis

A rare sight is coming to Oklahoma. The last time the Sooner State raised its gas tax rate, the Berlin Wall was still standing, and Congress was debating whether to ban smoking on flights shorter than two hours. Fast forward 31 years, and Oklahoma is finally at it again. On Sunday, the state’s gas tax rate will rise by 3 cents and its diesel tax rate by 6 cents. Both taxes will now stand at 19 cents per gallon—still among the lowest in the country. But Oklahoma isn’t the only state where gas taxes will soon rise.

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Most States Have Raised Gas Taxes in Recent Years

May 22, 2018 • By Carl Davis

An updated version of this blog was published in April 2019. State tax policy can be a contentious topic, but in recent years there has been a remarkable level of agreement on one tax in particular: the gasoline tax. Increasingly, state lawmakers are deciding that outdated gas taxes need to be raised and reformed to fund infrastructure projects that are vital to their economies.

How the Final GOP-Trump Tax Bill Would Affect Maryland Residents’ Federal Taxes

December 16, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

The final tax bill that Republicans in Congress are poised to approve would provide most of its benefits to high-income households and foreign investors while raising taxes on many low- and middle-income Americans. The bill would go into effect in 2018 but the provisions directly affecting families and individuals would all expire after 2025, with […]

How the House and Senate Tax Bills Would Affect Maryland Residents’ Federal Taxes

December 6, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

The House passed its “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” November 16th and the Senate passed its version December 2nd. Both bills would raise taxes on many low- and middle-income families in every state and provide the wealthiest Americans and foreign investors substantial tax cuts, while adding more than $1.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years. The graph below shows that both bills are skewed to the richest 1 percent of Maryland residents.

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House Tax Plan Offers an Exceptionally Bad Deal for California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland

November 14, 2017 • By Carl Davis

An ITEP analysis reveals that four states would see their residents pay more in aggregate federal personal income taxes under the House’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While some individual taxpayers in every state would face a tax increase, only California, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey would see such large increases that their residents’ overall personal income tax payments rise when compared to current law.

How the Revised Senate Tax Bill Would Affect Maryland Residents’ Federal Taxes

November 13, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

The Senate tax bill released last week would raise taxes on some families while bestowing immense benefits on wealthy Americans and foreign investors. In Maryland, 77 percent of the federal tax cuts would go to the richest 5 percent of residents, and 27 percent of households would face a tax increase, once the bill is fully implemented.

How the House Tax Proposal Would Affect Maryland Residents’ Federal Taxes

November 6, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was introduced on November 2 in the House of Representatives, includes some provisions that raise taxes and some that cut taxes, so the net effect for any particular family’s federal tax bill depends on their situation. Some of the provisions that benefit the middle class — like lower tax rates, an increased standard deduction, and a $300 tax credit for each adult in a household — are designed to expire or become less generous over time. Some of the provisions that benefit the wealthy, such as the reduction and eventual repeal of the estate…

30% of Marylanders Would Pay More Under GOP-Trump Tax Framework, But the State’s Richest 1% Would Pay Less

October 4, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

The “tax reform framework” released by the Trump administration and congressional Republican leaders on September 27 would not benefit everyone in Maryland equally. More than 30 percent of Maryland households would have higher tax bills, but nearly everyone among the richest one percent of the state’s residents would receive a tax cut.

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Washington Post: Ahead of regional summit, left-leaning policy groups say ‘No’ to a sales tax for Metro

August 28, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

A regionwide one-cent sales tax to fund Metro would have a disproportionate impact on poor families, taking five times the share of income from the bottom 20 percent of earners when compared with those in the top 1 percent, according to a new analysis from a trio of left-leaning think tanks representing the District, Maryland and Virginia.

ITEP Work in Action  

DC Fiscal Policy Institute, Maryland Center on Economic Policy, and The Commonwealth Institute: Triple Whammy: A Regional Sales Tax for Metro, Like Fare Hikes and Service Cuts, Would Fall Hardest on Struggling Families

August 28, 2017 • By ITEP Staff

A strong Metro system is important to all of us in the Washington region. And everyone agrees that the Metro system needs new resources to rebuild its health. But a regional sales tax—a widely discussed option—would be an unfair way to pay for it.