Maryland Tax Connect
The State of Maryland will start rolling out a new online tax portal in 2024, called “Maryland Tax Connect“.
We have received a recent email from the Comproller of Maryland, Ms. Brooke E. Lierman, that Maryland will soon launch a “brand-new online portal for Maryland business taxpayers to use in 2024“. The new portal is called Maryland Tax Connect. Based on the email, this is the functions the new portal will be able to do:
Maryland Tax Connect will be a self-service portal that will allow taxpayers to file their taxes online with increased ease and security, enabling taxpayers to interact with the Comptroller’s Office more efficiently. The portal is designed to allow taxpayers to complete important functions themselves, accessible from either a mobile device or a desktop, including:
- Making online payments
- Updating personal information
- Retrieving tax information
- Filing returns
- Viewing filing and tax history
- Registering a business
- Applying for or renewing business licenses
- Applying for sales and use tax exemption certificates
Outdated Portal
Most states already provide an online tax portal where you could do the things Maryland Tax Connect can do. These portals are especially convenient for Canadian eCommerce merchants. Quite often, the letter mails from the United State can take a long time to arrive, if they ever do.
Up till now, Maryland & North Carolina still don’t have yet this kind of self-service portal. In practice, they offer a webpage where you could fill out your tax returns online and arrange payments. However, once you hit the “FILE” button, you can’t keep track of the progress anymore. You only receive an online confirmation. You keep your fingers crossed and hope that “no news is good news”. Unfortunately, sometimes no news is only because they got lost in transit. Quite often, our clients only became aware of the tax owing after the State sent out the tax notices a 2nd time or a 3rd time. Usually by the time it arrived, the penalties and interest had already been doubled or tripled.
We hope that the new system will be reliable and easy to use, just like other states.
Rollout Starts in February 2024
According to the email received, these are the scheduled change:
- The legacy bFile system will be offline after January 22, 2024.
- Active business taxpayers will receive Instructions in mail on how to register for the new portal on February 5.
- New tax portal “go-live for major business taxes“.
- New functions will be added over time.
- By 2026, all Maryland taxpayers will be able to pay state taxes via the new portal.
Honestly, the upgrade of the new portal takes longer than we expect. There are already many smooth-functioning portals out there. Maybe the State of Maryland should simply copy those portals to speed up the migration. Anyway, as the adage goes, “better late than never“. We are still happy that the legacy system will be gone soon.
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