Maryland’s population is increasing rapidly while the state continues to lose its agricultural lands. This study explores Maryland’s primary tax measures affecting agriculture, the agricultural use assessment (AUA) and the agricultural land transfer tax (ATT), in order to determine whether these related tax programs could be improved in ways that would encourage farmland protection while continuing to benefit farmers’ bottom lines. ELI found that an effective policy response would be to (1) Increase the agricultural land transfer tax rate by an additional 0.5 - 2 percentage points and distribute the revenue from the increase to counties; or authorize those Maryland...
