We Made a Difference! Legislative Wrap-up

We have been hard at work this Legislative Session to help Maryland Businesses Thrive and Grow. We have worked countless hours, attended hundreds of meetings, met weekly with our Legislative Committee and formed a 42 organization Legislative Coalition to protect and promote your businesses. This session we have accomplished:

• inMD Internship Platform
  Successfully getting allocations to roll out inMD Statewide Internship in the Governor’s proposed budget for 2019.
• Internships
  Successfully passing HB 527 Higher Education – Maryland Technology Internship Program – to provide Maryland Companies reimbursement for up to lesser of 50% or $3000 per student that does an internship.
• Cyber
  Successfully passing SB228 Cyber Security Incentive Tax Credits, giving tax credits to investors in Cyber Security Companies each year and tax credits to purchasers of cyber solutions in tax credits each year through 2022.
• Biotechnology
  We successfully defeated pricing legislation and reporting legislation that would significantly harm the biotech industry.
• BIO Investor Tax Credit
  We defeated legislation that would put this program at risk.
• R&D Tax Credits
  We defeated legislation that would significantly reduce the amount of credit that goes to many of our companies in R&D in the state.
• Director Liability
  We defeated legislation that would have prevented Maryland companies from attracting directors to their boards.
• Metro Funded
  We assisted in getting the Metro funding bill passed to help with transportation to get employees to and from work.

Next Session
We are already working on next session. We plan to put the following at the top of the list:

• 5G
  We must have legislation that makes 5G available to all of our Bio and Tech Companies in the state ASAP.
• R&D Tax Credit
  We must raise the amount of tax credit give to our innovative companies. Right now, companies only get 11% of what they apply for because of a cap much lower than any other innovative state in the country.
• Bio Investor Tax Credit
  This must be increased it as it is fully subscribed within 75 seconds of the application process opening.
• General Investor Tax for Innovative Companies
  We have successfully obtained a credit for bio and cyber. Now we need to help all of the other innovative industries get investment in the state.
• Lower Corporate Tax Rate
  We must advocate to become competitive with other innovative states on our corporate tax rate.
• RISE Zone
  We need to incentivize innovative companies to house companies in RISE Zone.

If you are interested in joining our legislative committee or legislative coalition, please contact me at Tami@mdtechcouncil.com.