O'Malley’s Tax Increases Smother Maryland Businesses

Annapolis, MD – Maryland businesses are taking another left jab to the jaw from the O’Malley Administration as they struggle to survive in tough times. The State has announced that recession-fueled layoffs have drained more than $550 million from Maryland's Unemployment-Benefits Trust Fund. This will trigger an automatic - and smothering - tax jump for businesses next year. It’s so bad that some businesses are looking at a fourfold increase in unemployment taxes.

“Who is going to hire workers under those conditions?” asked Dr. Jim Pelura, Chairman of the Maryland Republican Party. “Gov. O'Malley, and his Democrats in the General Assembly, have launched a relentless assault on small business, the engine of our economy. Poor fiscal management, lack of planning, plus the rush to tax and spend during the Special Legislative Session of 2007 has made Maryland one of the most business unfriendly states in the country.”

“The timing could not be worse,” said Ellen Valentino, Maryland State Director for the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group for small firms. Many small businesses are folding –OR are escaping from Maryland and finding refuge in other States OR are letting workers go. Unemployment is already at an all time high of 7.2% last month. This will really affect whether business owners will hire in 2010.

The Fund paid out more in the first seven months of this year than it did in all of 2008. The increase, which will vary for employers depending on their history of claims against the fund, ranged from an additional $136 to $383 per worker in 2010. That's a nearly fourfold increase for businesses at the bottom of the tax-rate scale, a group that includes just over half of Maryland employers.

O’Malley and his cronies are succeeding in draining the business community by losing more jobs and the individual taxpayers’ pockets are next!