EASTON, MARYLAND — Maryland’s 2025 tax package included a 3 percent levy on many information-technology services. The pitch was a tax on the wealthy and on professional services. The invoice trail does not stop at a Bethesda campus. It reaches the Easton bookkeeper who keeps a shop’s accounts, the contractor who runs point-of-sale, and the website a St. Michaels inn uses for weekend reservations.

Cannabis and sports-wagering rate hikes drew the applause lines in Annapolis. The IT line is the one local owners will see on a bill. Stacked with Maryland’s income-tax load and the state’s lost AAA bond rating, that charge is a cost of doing business Talbot County did not vote on. Ask your vendor whether the 3 percent appears on the invoice. If it does, that is Annapolis — not the Chamber.

A large commercial campus, if one is ever filed here, paying the 2025 large-load electricity rate is among the few new tax bases big enough to grow local revenue without another pass at the same storefronts.

A 2026 bill — SB427/HB1595 — would have let counties create a special personal-property subclass for data centers. It was not enacted. The familiar 2.5-times real-property rate is the pre-existing general statutory cap on county personal-property rates under Tax-Property Article §6-202.