We need more businesses in Maryland. Businesses pay taxes and hire people who pay taxes. So we applaud Howard County Executive Ken Ulman for luring one Indian-based company and prompting another to expand in the county as a result of an “economic development” jaunt to the subcontinent in February. We?ll take him at his word that it was all of those handshakes in front of company signs featured in Ulman?s slide show that clinched the deals.
And we welcome his plans to create a Howard-India trade committee to develop “a permanent infrastructure that lets folks know there is a place to invest in.”
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But no committee can replace a stable regulatory environment and business-friendly policies. Many Indian businesses attracted to the region are technology related. The legislature may have repealed the “tech tax,” thanks to the heroic efforts of Tom Loveland and John Eckenrode, co-founders of the newly formed Maryland Computer Services Association. But the fact that legislators would even consider such a tax on one of our most productive business sectors and that Gov. Martin O?Malley would support it before reversing his opinion shows the capriciousness of our elected officials.
The slate of new taxes passed in the past six months, including raising the sales tax, corporate income tax and personal income taxes and creating a “millionaire?s tax,” also work against the state on a relative basis compared with surrounding states and on an absolute basis. Why should an Indian company come to Howard when the owner could pay lower taxes in Virginia and reap all of the same benefits of being close to Washington, with its federal contracts and graduates of the region?s world-class universities that businesses need to support their growth?
Choosing Maryland does not make much sense when you crunch the numbers. That makes efforts like Ulman?s to establish a business relationship with India ultimately meaningless unless O?Malley and our elected officials start thinking more like entrepreneurs and less like tax collectors.
