Dear legislators,
Your ignorance of business practice is understandable because only a few of you have operated businesses, a review of your biographies reveals. When that ignorance is reflected glaringly and in precise focus, as it was in your latest destructive taxing decisions, however, it begins to remind a casual student of history of those in the king?s court who with his leadership taxed we the people before the revolution.
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Curiously, many of the businesses being afflicted by your inability to manage expenses and your decision to levy taxes are silent. What?s clear is that they can not so easily raise their prices with the ease you raise taxes.
We deserve some of the blame. Unlike our forefathers, we gripe but do nothing. We do not throw tea parties in the Chesapeake. We just ignore you ? at our own peril. News reports show many residents out shopping before the first of the year had no idea taxes were going to go up in 2008.
But our silence ? some would say acquiescence ? is not guaranteed.
Some may resign themselves to the new taxes. But others will move. Out of state, like the owner of the company in the attached photo.
Enough of those businesses moving or closing means lower tax revenue and fewer people earning salaries in Maryland who can afford to buy goods and services at local businesses. Because small business creates most of the jobs in the state, that is a problem. In fact, 82 percent of those working in Maryland do not work for some form of local, state or federal government. So what you do has huge repercussions on the 2,094,088 of us in the work force who do not work for you.
Why don?t each of you call business owners in your district ? all businesses must obtain licenses from the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, so you can easily access their contact information ? and ask them how the new sales, corporate, cigarette and higher vehicle titling taxes will affect them?
Business owners ? why not stand up for yourselves by calling your legislators? All the contact information for state legislators can be found online at mdelect.net. And why not protest? As H.L. Mencken said, “Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.”
More communication can only mean more accurate representation in the upcoming session. Silence breeds taxes and compounds contempt for those who tax us.
