The Senate gave preliminary approval to a slimmed down version of legislation requiring the periodic review and evaluation of many state tax credit programs. As originally introduced, SB 739 and HB 764 would have grouped 31 state tax credits into 5-year review cycles, and automatically terminated programs that were not reenacted. The House passed HB 764 last week after removing the automatic tax credit termination provision.
The Senate further pared down SB 739 by limiting the review to the 8 largest tax credit programs, including the earned income credit, enterprise zone credit, R&D credit and biotech credit, among others. The Senate also specified that for any of the credit programs with an existing sunset date, the review would take place in the year before the sunset. The Maryland Chamber had opposed the bills in their original form, but takes no position on the legislation since the automatic termination provisions have been removed. A little over a week remains to resolve the Senate and House differences on the bills. See our earlier blog posts on this issue here, here and here. For further information contact Ron Wineholt at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
About Ronald W. Wineholt