Bulletins

Tech lobbying groups sue to block Maryland's digital ad tax

Lobbying groups that represent Google, Facebook and other tech giants filed a lawsuit against the state of Maryland Thursday aimed at stopping a new tax on the tech giants' ad revenues from going into effect.

The lawsuit is backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, among other lobbying groups. (The IA represents Google, Amazon and Facebook, among others). The suit claims that the law is unconstitutional and violates a federal law that forbids states from discriminating against digital services by taxing them alone.

Maryland legislators overrode their governor's veto to adopt the new ad-revenue tax last week, which would affect tech companies that make more than $100 million in ad sales.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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