Maryland To Tax Custom Programming and Computer Services 395
mcwop writes "Early this morning Maryland passed legislation to apply a new 6% sales tax to 'custom computer programming' and other computer- and hardware-related services. Computer industry groups lobbied hard against the measure to no avail. Purchasers of IT services may find that in-house IT and buying out-of-state become attractive options, as well as cutting money out of other projects."
buying out of state isn't an option (Score:3, Informative)
IOW (Score:2)
Re:IOW (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what those congresmen do to the hookers
Pay them with your tax dollars. That's a fact.
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Re:IOW (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:buying out of state isn't an option (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:buying out of state isn't an option (Score:4, Informative)
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Thank you, Maryland legislature! And to all you other MD-based purchasers of "custom computer programming," I'm as custom as you can get, I have good references, and I come with a built-in 6% di
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So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
And why should we be suprised by this?. The last time I took my car in for repair, I paid sales tax on part and labor. When I have my car parked Valet, taxes are factored into the the cost. And when UPS delivers a package for me, I pay tax on that too.
Yeah taxes suck, but I'm more suprised to learn that it wasn't taxed for all these years, rather than that it's taxed now.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
In California, repair and installation labor is non-taxable [ca.gov].
Point being, some labor is untaxed in some parts of the country, so this development may come as a surprise to some of us.
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"In California, repair and installation labor is non-taxable."
It will probably be taxed sometime next year or the year after. The alternative is California having its' credit rating downgraded, because of the huge (10 billion bucks) [sfgate.com] shortfall in taxation revenue, which is likely to grow to approximately $30 billion by 2009, as the rest of the mortgage resets, foreclosures, and reposessions work their way through the system.
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Sales taxes used to be thought of as regressive - but when you consider that, as Leona Hemsley said wrt income taxes - "taxes are for poor people", and how they have the $$$ to pay less than what would be considered "their fair share", a sales tax isn't all that regressive. After all, if they spend it, it will be taxed. When they buy a Rolex, they'll pay more tax than you will for your Timex.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
A mailbox is going to get opened in Delaware and a cell phone registered to that address, while everything else remains exactly where it always way.
Why do you think just about every credit card and predatory lending scheme seems to get mailed to you from Delaware? Because they've figure out it's a great business model to take half the amount of tax on all of everyone else's dubious business whilst not having to support anything more than the name-only corporate HQs.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
If you can dream it, we can tax it
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How? AFAIA, your sales tax is reported to the state and then collected in-state. What legal authority does Maryland have over the denizens of another state?
None from what I can tell, but then again I'm definitely not lawyer-shaped.
Re:Get real! Why should one business be favored .. (Score:2)
Re:Get real! Why should one business be favored .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Company A writes software and troubleshoots computers, Company B mows lawns.
Let's say in Maryland sales tax is 6% and corporate income tax is 25%.
If Company A does $100,000 worth of business, they will now need to pay 25% income tax and 6% sales tax.
If Company B does $100,000 worth of business, they will only pay the 25% income tax.
At the end of the year Company A pays out $31,000 in taxes, while Company B pays out $25,000.
You may say thi
Re:Get real! Why should one business be favored .. (Score:4, Informative)
Except other labor-only services pay no such tax. Specifically, any maintenence services (as opposed to fabrication of new items) are not taxed. From the Maryland tax code web page:
On the other hand, charges for repairing or restoring an existing item of tangible personal property to its original condition are not subject to tax. A charge for reconfiguring or enhancing existing tangible personal property, unless it results in the creation of a new and different item of tangible personal property, is also not taxable.
Essentially, IT is being singled out for paying taxes whereas other labor types do not. There is no tax on having your accounting done, but now there is a tax on having your accounting software debugged. There isn't a tax on having your car fixed, but there is a tax on having your servers fixed. There is no tax on having your nails done, or having your lawn mowed, or having your house painted. Why are technology services being singled out in this respect?
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My major issue with this taxation is that contracted programmers don't own the works they create (generally), therefore they have no product to sell. The contracting company owns the software from the first line of code to the last, so the only asset the programmer has is in selling his or her services, which is now being taxed even though authors,
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Re:Get real! Why should one business be favored .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not that far of a drive to Deleware (Score:5, Insightful)
So is this good or bad for coders? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stupid taxes are still stupid, but is this one good or bad for the IT sector in general?
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This will factor into the "cost of doing business." Some number of employers who would have paid for services before will now either do without or look somewhere else where they don't pay the 6% penalty, ultimately they'll do without the productivity boost they previously would have had.
Those are the facts, it's simple supply and demand. What can be ar
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Sorry to reply to my own post, but this requires clarification. Simply being in Maryland and doing work meant that I'd be paying other taxes -- eating, buying supplies, etc. There was no direct sales tax on the work I did.
Re:So is this good or bad for coders? (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is where the real victims will be, those of us who do programming work on the side for some extra income. The hassle of getting a tax ID (which might require setting up a real company), collecting and passing on sales tax to the state is pretty big when all you had to do previously was declare a couple thousand extra dollars on your income taxes at the end of the year. The big consulting companies will complain about it, but in the end they'll just keep on rolling. The little guys will get rolled over.
Michigan (which is where I live and work) recently passed a large tax law change that will charge 6% sales tax on consulting services, among many other things such as massage services (yeah you'll pay 6% on your happy ending!) I'm still trying to decide if its worth the hassle anymore.
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Previous experience shows that when you file such forms, the state of Maryland tries to tax your entire income for the year, not just the income you earned in Maryland. Simply submitting the form opens you up to all sorts of legal hassles and inquiries from an extremely incompetent government agency. When I lived there, I had such a
There are no permanent jobs (Score:2)
There is no such thing as a permanent job.
Remove that phrase from your lexicon.
Employment is at-will. Anyway, businesses come and go.
Contracting is the way this industry is going and I think that is a good thing. Billing by the hour engenders more professionalism on both sides of the equation. Normally employers look at young engineers as a safety valve for inability to plan the project. They have no life, so we can wink/nudge them into working way past 40 hours. Billing by the hour, contrac
Bad (Score:2)
So, when the politicians get the public fired up about companies making
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Why? Government jobs are onsite, that's why (Score:5, Insightful)
The Feds are in DC (Score:2)
And most programming shops in the area are in Northern Virginia. The few that are left in Maryland will move to Virginia, too.
The only programming strength Maryland has is in Biotech, and there's no reason that can't move to Virginia, too.
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One more positive for packages (Score:2)
So this will be another factor boosting the use of packages by companies.
Given the enormous crunch coming for labor in general and programmers in particular, this is pretty much a nail in the coffin for one sector of business in that state. And as some companies successfully use packages, that will be used a model for other companies elsewhere.
buying out-of-state might not help (Score:2)
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Idiocy like this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Who voted for these weasels? It wasn't me. Of course, the thought of cutting spending never entered their tiny little brains.
Re:Idiocy like this... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just awful (Score:2)
One of mine had a staffer to answer the phone, and she said she felt betrayed by her representative. She said "I don't know what they were thinking; it doesn't make any sense what they did". She urged me to write a letter.
My other two representatives didn't have the balls to answer the phone.
For the typical Maryland family, this tax will cost us about $1K-3K per year. Possibly less if you're at the poverty line, but then it hits you harder because you do
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They "take" from special interests, usually not from government coffers. I can't imagine how taxing labor is in the interest of either party, although it does sound like something Democrats would do due to their lack of understanding of economics. Republicans overspend because they're addicted. Democrats do it because they think it's actually a good idea.
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Re:Idiocy like this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, how dare he do the math and quote the correct percentage increase.
It's not a sales tax if it applies to services (Score:2, Interesting)
To sum up, less attractive to business, higher cost of living, more of the economy goes underground and out of the tax system, precident of selecting specific service industries to be taxed at special rates and the corruption that will engender, and
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daydreaming (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, well
Yay Maryland! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one more reason for those heavily dependent on government services to flock to and continue to live in the state, and those who are actually productive to leave. And it's a downward spiral, they'll kill their small businesses and find new things to tax when they can't balance the budget for the umpteenth year in a row.
But the people of Maryland will keep voting the same bozos into office that will continue this spiral. Watching the election ads there was hilarious -- they catered to imbeciles like I've never seen -- and it worked.
Hell, it's a microcosm for our entire stinking, failing republic-turned-democracy.
Man, I'm bitter. But who wouldn't be?
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Yes - taxes can hurt industry, but Maryland is doing great the way it is (ignoring Baltimore!)
Re:Yay Maryland! (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading more into it, apparently their large surplus was from the booming real-estate bubble. This matches my experience, making a huge profit on the house I bought there before selling at the peak of the market.
Interestingly, the housing bubble was fueled by massive speculation and ridiculous lending practices, hurting a lot of poor people. Where did this surplus money come from? Well, ultimately, from the Fed which will continue to bail out mortgage lenders. See that dollar's value plummet? Add that to the hidden taxes imposed on every citizen of the country, including those in Maryland who are probably struggling to remain solvent in the disastrous housing market.
So how rich a state is Maryland really? Were it not for a constant, massive infusion of federal dollars, the state would collapse, starting with Baltimore. Who pays for massive infusion of federal money? The rest of the country.
Maybe it will continue, maybe it won't. A good long term plan would include measure to make the state of Maryland self-sufficient, but this isn't politically advantageous there. Kind of like the U.S. as a whole.
This whole house of cards will come crashing down, hopefully not as quickly and as soon as it should.
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Maryland—Welcome to Canada!
state constitution (Score:2)
Art. 40. That the liberty of the press ought to be inviolably preserved; that every citizen of the State ought to be allowed to speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege.
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Pah! (Score:2)
Expensive lawn care, free programming (Score:5, Funny)
trapped (Score:2)
So frankly, this simply crunches the contractor work a bit. Many feel i
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Opportunity! (Score:2)
Here in Illinois (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, I'm really tired of our taxing bodies looking for every possibly opportunity to increase their take, regardless of the effect it will have on the local population. Only a complete fucktard who is totally ignorant of what he or she is doing could possibly propose such regulation. Of course, I just described your typical politician. They are ignorant and they really don't care.
I did some contract work recently (software only), and the head accountant requested my Tax I.D. so they could apply the proper sales tax. I told them they couldn't have it because, as of this date, custom software was not taxable. Had my lawyer verify that, and I faxed them a copy of the appropriate language (right from the Department of Revenue Web site.) They were surprised, because they had been told by their people that custom software was taxable. I figure I saved them some few bucks.
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They tried the same thing here in my State: so far it's been voted down. Our Governor claimed that the State could bring in an extra 50 million a year if they taxed such services. That would only work for a year or so, because all the people like me would immediately look for greener pastures. I mean, for crying out loud, if the goal is to efficiently remove the ability of in-state companies to avail themselves of local software talent, this is a great idea. From any other perspective, it's just mind-bogglingly stupid.
Sort of like simcity, where you raise the tax the day before the end of the month.
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I used to completely disagree. I figured that someone who could get elected to a prominent political office couldn't possibly be that stupid and must be deliberately making poor decisions in the interest of looking good and getting re-elected.
Then I received a letter in the mail written by Annapolis mayor Ellen Moyer, congratulating the populace on weathering a hurricane. It was so poorly written that after reading it I was certain she had b
Is it really a big deal? (Score:2)
I wou
MIchigan screwed too (Score:2)
How will freelancers do this? (Score:2)
What a giant pain in the ass...
What's the difference? (Score:2)
From TFA (Score:2)
Custom programming is one thing and that kind of a move would certainly make me leave the state. Computer Support Services, Data Center Support, and Disaster Recovery Services however are the big ones IMO. It looks like Best Buy is going to have to pay sales tax for the Geek Squad - which they probably were charging anyways. But what ab
What a mess... (Score:2)
My clients purchase my time as a service. As a side effect I may or may not create custom code for them, or improve their existing code ba
Maryland businesses! Move to Delaware! (Score:2)
-ever-.
Similar, but more difficult in Connecticut (Score:2)
Try THAT when creating an invoice with your average software!
Oh... And while speaking to a CT Dept of Revenue "Services" rep, I was told that I could charge 6% for everything.
Oh great. So, for my convenience, I can just overcharge my clients and give the extra c
Taxing services (Score:3, Insightful)
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How about taxing political campaigns for their contributions?
It's growth industry: every year the amount send on political campaigns grows.
I propose a 25% tax on political contributions per criteria met:
Tax the lawyers (Score:3, Insightful)
Many politicians are also lawyers or have friends who are lawyers. I bet they wouldn't want their services taxed.
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Put your money where your mouth is and stop paying ALL your taxes. Fight the power!
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1. I don't think something being illegal has any kind of correlation to its morality or ethical standpoint and its only illogical if I agree that the social contract is desirable as it stands, you may enjoy the social contract but I think its corruption mandates its dismantling.
2. Why is insulting a government a bad thing? Who can give me an argument that insulting a government is a bad thing unless the insult is malicious whereas I view it as legitimate
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Re:This is awesome. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The healthcare system and educational system in this country are horrifically mismanaged and our infrastructure is aging and in some cases crumbling.
Maybe some taxes go to keep these services up to token levels but I think the rest lines corrupt individual's pockets