Connect with us

Maryland

Maryland joins IRS Direct File program, offering free tax filing for up to 700,000 taxpayers – Maryland Matters

Published

on

Maryland joins IRS Direct File program, offering free tax filing for up to 700,000 taxpayers – Maryland Matters


Some Maryland taxpayers will be able to use a free electronic filing tool for their federal taxes rather than having to pay a tax preparer or buy tax-filing software next year, when Maryland will offer the IRS’s new Direct File service.

The service was tested in 12 states this year, where 140,803 people filed with Direct File, saving an estimated $5.6 million in tax preparation fees. Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman (D) estimated Wednesday that as many as 700,000 Maryland taxpayers could be eligible for the program when it debuts in the state next year.

“While we value our relationship with tax preparers and CPAs (certified public accountants), it’s unacceptable that Marylanders should have to pay any portion whatsoever of their refund or paycheck to fulfill a mandatory requirement like filing tax returns,” Lierman said at a news conference announcing the program.

The IRS and the U.S. Treasury still have to finalize eligibility rules for the program this fall, but Lierman said it will be a “game changer” for those families who do qualify, which could be as much as 20% of individual taxpayers in the state.

Advertisement

“Taxes are a part of the glue that keeps our state and our nation together, functioning, producing, protecting and thriving,” Lierman said. “Yet in America, we make it uniquely challenging to pay those taxes and file a return — until now.”

According to the Treasury, taxpayers spend “approximately 13 hours and $270 preparing their taxes each year.” Many Americans use tax filing services or software, such as TurboTax and H&R Block, to ensure that their taxes are filed correctly, despite most of the information being readily available state and federal tax collection agencies.

It’s unacceptable that Marylanders should have to pay any portion whatsoever of their refund or paycheck to fulfill a mandatory requirement like filing tax returns.

– Comptroller Brooke Lierman

Advertisement

Direct File launched this year in 12 states for people to file their 2023 federal returns — Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said the program is aimed at helping middle-income tax filers with “relatively simple” filings.

“What I can tell you is our goal for us is to build a system that’s going to work for working class and middle class Americans. So you get a W-2, and you’re somebody who’s a teacher, you’re a fireman, you’re a doctor who’s earning most of your money from a W-2, we want to make sure we’re building a system that potentially works for you,” said Adeyemo, who was in Annapolis for the announcement.

“The thing we’re not going to do is build a system that works for big corporations or wealthy individuals. Next year we’re going to expand the system so that more Americans are able to participate in it,” Adeyemo said.

Advertisement

The Biden administration invited all 50 states and the District of Columbia to join the program next year, when people will be filing their 2024 taxes. The Treasury said that Maryland joins Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Connecticut, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Maine in taking up Direct File.

“I know to some, this announcement may seem inconsequential — and I know how exciting tax announcements are,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) joked at the announcement. “But the details matter. They matter to the families who are impacted by this work. They’re going to matter to the families, who … dread tax season because it feels complicated. Who dread tax season because it seems expensive, or oftentimes have to deal with the consequences of getting something wrong.”

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) discussing Maryland’s participation in the Direct File program on Sept. 4, 2024. Photo by Danielle J. Brown.

The Direct File program came out of the Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022, which also secured additional funding to help the IRS modernize and provide better services to Americans.

But Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who chairs a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee, said Direct File program and other services under the Inflation Reduction Act could be “under threat.”  While his subcommittee wants to fully fund the IRS and keep Direct File going, House leaders want to cut funding for both.

He also said that the industry is lobbying against the free tax filing system.

Advertisement

“There are people who didn’t want us to do this, including a lot of the middlemen” who currently profit from tax preparation, Van Hollen said. “They’re lobbying against this kind of thing.”

In addition to Van Hollen, Moore, Lierman and Adeyemo, Wednesday’s event drew a number of Maryland Democratic heavyweights: U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer John Sarbanes and State Treasurer Dereck Davis.

Hoyer put it simply: “Nobody likes taxes.”

“We don’t really get excited about paying our taxes. But we know that it is the price of our democracy,” Hoyer said. “We ought to make it as easy as possible for people to comply with a legal obligation that they have to support their country, their state and their communities.”

Advertisement



Source link

Maryland

The rich and controversial history of Maryland’s clown ministers

Published

on

The rich and controversial history of Maryland’s clown ministers


We are fools for Christ’s sake.

So believed the apostle Paul when he penned a letter to the Corinthian church. And so, too, believed Maryland’s pioneering clown ministry.

This niche style of Christian outreach is as outrageous as it is earnest, and traces some of its roots back to Columbia. It’s perhaps a legacy that James Rouse never imagined when he founded the Howard County town, with its distinctive urban plan, efficient use of land and commitment to diversity. Rouse included a series of interfaith centers intended to bring people of different beliefs under one roof. The model inspired one local pastor at Abiding Savior Lutheran Church to pursue his own experiment blending liturgy with laughter.

These days, Rev. Floyd Shaffer is remembered by some as the “clown father” of modern Christian clowning. Though liturgical clowning already had a history in Europe, Shaffer spent his time in Columbia in the 1970s dabbling in clown ministry and eventually became known as a leader of the movement in the United States. He died three years ago, his wife Marlene Shaffer confirmed.

Advertisement

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Even though the whimsical ministry’s heyday was in the 1980s and ’90s, some Christians continue to answer the call to clown. And the practice has captivated new audiences on TikTok and YouTube.

Earlier this year, the Columbia Maryland Archives put together an online exhibit about the town’s nondenominational clown ministry, called Faith and Fantasy, which Shaffer founded in 1974. Archivist Erin Berry said staffers were inspired after stumbling across a popular YouTube channel’s episode on Christian clowning.

Shaffer’s idea for a clown ministry came to him in 1964 on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The pastor was in town for a Bible study and leafing through some books when he stumbled across the etymology of the word clown. He connected it with Jesus’ command to be a servant.

That same year, Lutheran church leaders were getting creative with clowns — and it wasn’t going over well.

Advertisement

The National Lutheran Council produced the short film “Parable,” which depicted Jesus as a white-faced clown and the world as a circus.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

The film’s 1964 debut at the New York World’s Fair roiled event organizers, some of whom resigned in protest. One “disgruntled minister threatened to riddle the screen with shotgun holes if the film was shown,” the Library of Congress noted when it announced that it had selected “Parable” for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2012.

Six years later, Shaffer debuted as a clown minister for the opening day of Abiding Savior’s vacation Bible school, according to a news article preserved in Columbia’s archives.

Floyd Shaffer as Socataco and his granddaughter Erica play with a clown marionette. (Created by Floyd Shaffer/Courtesy of Columbia Maryland Archives)

“I don’t think that something that’s so controversial — I don’t know what other word to use — as clowning ministry could flourish in another place other than Columbia,” Berry said. “You could just try what you wanted to try.”

Advertisement

Other leaders within Columbia’s interfaith centers encouraged Shaffer to keep at it, said 86-year-old Marge Goethe. Her husband, Rev. Jerry Goethe, the pastor for Kittamaqundi Community Church, suggested to Shaffer that he teach a class on clown ministry. Together, the two men designed a seven-week course that covered theology, the history of clowning, skits and games to encourage playfulness.

Many local residents, including Marge Goethe, enrolled in the classes, embraced clown ministry and set out to visit children’s hospitals, retirement homes and domestic violence shelters. She learned how to silently deliver sermons with gestures and humor, but never mockery. Goethe used lipstick to draw a red circle — a symbol of the liturgical clown — on her cheek.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Goethe developed her clown persona and named him Harry, after a man she knew as a child who lived on the streets. He was a reminder that she could either be the kind of person who brushed him off or helped him out.

Howard County’s clown ministry eventually grew to include as many as 300 clowns, The Baltimore Sun reported in 1994. Members of the Faith and Fantasy ministry went on to teach clown ministry around the country and internationally.

Advertisement

Not every audience loved the routine.

During a worship service at a Virginia college’s youth convention, Goethe and other clown ministers offered to draw the mark of the clown on people’s cheeks.

“What is that, the mark of the devil?” one man asked.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Goethe couldn’t reply while she was in character.

“All I had to do was accept what he was feeling at the time and hope it changed at some point,” Goethe said.

Advertisement

Goethe still attends Kittamaqundi services and performs clown ministry. When people ask her about the decades she spent cheering up strangers, she worries she won’t find the right words to explain how rich clown ministry turned out to be.

“I did more good for people being silent,” Goethe said.

Shaffer eventually moved to Ohio and authored several books with titles such as “If I Were A Clown” and “Clown Ministry.” He produced instructional videos on clown ministry that lately have found a rapt audience on the internet.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Jen Bryant realized she had a personal connection with clown ministry while putting together an episode on the subject for her YouTube channel, Fundie Fridays, which features cultural commentary on aspects of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States. The Missouri resident’s grandfather, a Catholic, performed for a time as a clown minister under the name “George-o.”

Advertisement

Every community seems to have its subcultures, Bryant said, and she found that was also true for clowns. There are classical clowns like Joseph Grimaldi, a Regency-era entertainer who introduced the white face makeup. There are dark clowns like Juggalos, a nickname for fans of the hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse. And there are scary clowns like Pennywise, the shapeshifting antagonist in Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel “It.”

At first, Christian clowns sounded like a meme to Bryant. The full story, she said, turned out to be “way more interesting.”

Bryant and her husband James Bryant ordered copies of Shaffer’s books and collected a variety of research on clown ministry for their episode, which posted in April. The hourlong segment earned an “overwhelmingly positive” response from their audience, many of whom are in the midst of deconstructing their faith and understanding of Christianity, Bryant said.

“Everyone just thought this was just the most pleasant little novelty,” James Bryant said.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Advertisement

Maybe Christian clowns are even the original deconstructors.

“They’re people who went, ‘faith wasn’t working exactly how we wanted it to, so we broke it down and changed it,’” he said. “It worked. It has a legacy.”

Appearing in a video on Kittamaqundi’s YouTube page, Shaffer said clown ministry gives people a new way to live out and enjoy theology, “instead of being so glum and gloomy and solemn, as much of the church has become.”

Many Bible stories defy rational thought and that’s sort of the point, Floyd said in the video.

Scripture, Floyd noted, often suggests that God has a sense of humor.

Advertisement





Source link

Continue Reading

Maryland

Calmer weather and milder temperatures in store for Maryland on Christmas

Published

on

Calmer weather and milder temperatures in store for Maryland on Christmas


Calmer weather and milder temperatures in store for Maryland on Christmas – CBS Baltimore

Watch CBS News


With bitterly cold temperatures, and mixed precipitation now behind us, Marylanders can look forward to much calmer weather on Christmas.

Advertisement

Be the first to know

Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.




Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Maryland

Where To Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2024 In Annapolis

Published

on

Where To Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2024 In Annapolis


ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD — New Year’s Eve will feature fireworks over the Annapolis Harbor, six Arundel Mills celebrations at Maryland Live! Casino & Hotel and the annual Charm City Countdown party at Hilton Baltimore BWI Airport Hotel.

Here is a look at some events happening in Anne Arundel County. Click on any event to learn more.

Annapolis

The transition from one year to the next is often marked by the singing of “Auld Lang Syne,” a Scottish folk song whose title roughly translates to “days gone by,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica and History.com.

Advertisement

The tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back 8,000 years to ancient Babylonians, who made promises to return borrowed items and repay debts at the beginning of the new year, which was in mid-March when they planted their crops.

According to legend, if people kept their word, the pagan gods would grant them favor in the coming year. However, if they broke their promises, they would lose favor with the gods.

Many secular New Year’s resolutions focus on imagining new, improved versions of ourselves.

The failure rate of New Year’s resolutions is about 80 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report. There are many reasons, but a big one is they’re made out of remorse — for gaining weight, for example — and aren’t accompanied by a shift in attitude or a plan for coping with the stress and discomfort that comes with changing a habit or condition.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending