Larry Fiorino carried his laptop around G.1440?s offices Thursday to prove a point.
“This is my office,” Fiorino said, pointing to the computer. “We don?t need office space to be productive.”
Fiorino, president and chief executive officer of G.1440, an IT consulting and staffing firm in Baltimore, warned that it wouldn?t be hard for firms throughout Maryland such as his to pick up and leave if the new 6 percent tax on computer services, enacted in November by the General Assembly, isn?t repealed.
General Assembly hearings on legislation to repeal the pending tax are scheduled for Wednesday. In advance of the hearings, the Greater Baltimore Committee has started an online ad campaign urging the repeal of the tax.
“We should be nurturing the investment in this industry, rather than discouraging its development,” said Donald Fry, president and CEO of the GBC. “This tax will certainly have a chilling effect on the growth of the industry … if we don?t take action now.”
The GBC spent a little less than $20,000 to have banner ads on several regional news Web sites. The ads say the computer services tax would affect health care, information technology, defense and financial services jobs in Maryland. The GBC said the ad would be viewed about 1.6 million times in the next week.
Not only would IT firms move from Maryland to states such as Pennsylvania and Virginia, but workers connected to the technology companies ? accountants, marketers, maintenance staff ? would also be affected, Fiorino said.
“The tech worker is very mobile, and the work itself is very mobile,” Fiorino said. “The ripple effect of what?s going to happen in Maryland is just going to be tremendous.”
If the tax goes into effect as scheduled on July 1, companies that buy computer services are going to replace Maryland vendors with cheaper offshore customers, said Tom Loveland, CEO of Mind Over Machines and founder of the Maryland Computer Services Association.
“All of this while everyone talks about recession,” Loveland said. “The computer tax is bad for Maryland and must be repealed.”
