The super smart folks in the Maryland legislature who know more than the rest of us *sarcasm detected* are at it again! Somehow, they think that imposing a 10% tax on Facebook and Google for the digital ads they sell in Maryland is a good idea.

We’re literally going through a pandemic and small businesses are barely surviving as it is, and these people think that more taxes are the answer. Who exactly do they think is going to be paying those taxes? Facebook? Google? Psh. Those guys will just raise their prices to offset the tax loses so that small businesses carry the burden.

This is what happens when government runs amok. These people must be stopped. Governor Hogan has already vetoed the bill, but they’re scraping together the votes to override his veto.

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s your boy, Jaron Rice, founder and CEO of Magothy Payments, Maryland’s highest-rated merchant services provider.

I wish I was coming to you under better circumstances, but apparently the legislature in the state of Maryland is terrible. Yeah, they’re terrible.

If you don’t know, some of the brilliant folks on the Maryland legislature think that a digital advertising tax is a good idea in the middle of a freaking pandemic in which small business are barely hanging on. Somebody had the bright idea that companies like Google and Facebook that sell digital advertising should pay a tax to the state of Maryland up to 10% based on the volume of digital ads that they sell in the state of Maryland.

Using round numbers, if Facebook sells $100 million in Facebook ads to Maryland businesses, the state of Maryland wants Facebook to pay them $10 million in a tax. Indulge me, if you would. Who do you think is actually going to be paying that tax? Do you think it’s Facebook, or do you think it’s the small businesses that purchase ads from Facebook whose costs are going to go up? Who do you think?

As a merchant services provider, we are a trickle-down business. We work a lot with home improvement contractors, home services companies, and a lot of our clients – a lot of them – use Google ads and Facebook as their primary lead generation tools.

In the middle of the pandemic, not only getting used to the restrictions that the politicians are putting on them but the fact that so many Americans are hurting and out of work, if you’re a home improvement contractor, your cost per lead is going through the roof, as it is, simply because your ad has to be shown to more people just to find somebody who is interested in a position to be able to purchase that service from you.

On top of that, the bright folks in the Maryland legislature think that taxing Google and taxing Facebook is a good idea. Yeah. This is what happens when people who have never run anything or owned a business try and control the economy and people who actually produce. It’s terrible. It’s idiotic. Governor Hogan has already vetoed it, and they’re scraping together the votes to override his veto because they’re terrible.

Please do us a favor. Call your elected officials. Tell them that this is asinine and that they’re going to be voted out in the upcoming election because I can’t even for the life of me understand why anybody with two brain cells to rub together thinks that this is a good idea right now. But, you know, crazier things have happened.

With that, we’re signing out. I got nothing else.

 

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