HB 804 – Whistleblower Reward Program
Many of you will remember the amendment to the RELIEF Act we talked about in last week’s newsletter that would give money to illegal immigrants- it’s back! Just as expected, the Senate passed a standalone version of the amendment as SB 218.
Roughly 80,000 people in Maryland use something called an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) rather than a social security number (SSN) to file their taxes each year. Among those, a significant portion of them are illegal immigrants. When this amendment was put into the RELIEF Act, it put the entire project in jeopardy because of how divisive it was, and now as its own bill- not much has changed.
Over the course of the past few weeks, Democrat lawmakers in Annapolis have been hard at work raising your taxes for a whole slew of issues (like advertising your small business online), and are now planning on giving away those taxes to people who are in this country illegally. Many Marylanders are already facing uphill economic battles, and to think that we’d tax you even more just to give to someone else is absurd (but not surprising).
The House version of the bill is currently making its way through committee and onto the floor, and you can keep track of that here, but it’s very likely to pass and arrive at Governor Hogan’s desk.