Gene Burner, executive director of the Manufacturers' Alliance of Maryland, calls the business taxation climate one of the state's top lures. He should know: For 10 years he served as the director of the Maryland Department of Assessments & Taxation. He says the state's worker's comp and unemployment insurance burdens have been better than most U.S. states too, with legislative efforts currently under way to patch up the weak spots.
      Burner says there's more to the state's innovation infrastructure than just the feds: Look at Johns Hopkins, as it leads the way in the state's growing biotech arena. A $1-billion biotech park next to the school's medical campus is just getting under way. So is the Institute for Multi-Scale Modeling of Biological Interactions, an institute backed in part by a $2.7-million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy
      "A lot of that kind of presence in Maryland is a multiplying factor for the economy, and keeps the personal income levels up," says Burner. "The decision was made years ago to tax personal income, which manufacturing certainly generates. With one exception, manufacturing can register no complaint with the present level of business taxation," he continues. That one exception, which he says is not yet big enough to be called a big negative, has to do with what he calls "poorly written" legislation against so-called corporate tax loopholes, but which he says sweeps in too many legitimate transactions.
      There is a measure afoot this session that would require companies to pay transfer and recordation taxes when property worth at least $1 million is transferred from one entity to another through the sale of a company's controlling interests. The state's R&D tax credit program expired at the end of 2004, so a big push will be under way to reinstate it without a sunset provision. Still, the overall package is friendly.
      "We don't have an annual franchise tax, or an alternative minimum tax," says Burner. "We just don't have those added taxes that eat you up. Some of the battles we'll be fighting in this legislative session are to keep it that way."