Maryland taxpayers have benefited tremendously from Governor Hogan's decision to invest in the Maryland Business Express, an online business portal that provides a robust suite of online services for customers to interact with the Department of Assessments and Taxation, which maintains the records that allows businesses to operate in Maryland.
This award-winning online platform is available for creating businesses, filing annual reports and personal property returns, and enabling access to business records online. Since its launch, Maryland Business Express has enabled customers to conduct business with the Department when it is convenient for them, and has resulted in better engagement with customers, quicker turnaround, and more efficient and effective workflows. Customers can now do the following online: reserve a trade name; register an entity; file annual reports and personal property returns; and order certified and non-certified copies of documents, or view copies of those documents for free. The increased availability of online services has reduced processing times for the following: business formation time has been significantly reduced (from ten to four weeks), with certain processes available almost immediately; trade name processing time is now forty-eight hours instead of ten weeks; and personal property return review time is now five weeks instead of fourteen.
All told, more than half of all documents are now filed online, forty percent of which occur outside of normal business hours, and one in five users access Maryland Business Express on a mobile device. Maryland Business Express boasts a 95% customer satisfaction rating, and the average wait time for in-person visits to the Customer Service Counter has decreased from forty-five minutes to less than thirty.
The Department of Assessments and Taxation also manages Maryland's Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Suite, another award-winning initiative that empowers customers to file, search, and
retrieve
certified and non-certified UCC documents electronically. The UCC Suite boasts a 45% adoption rate for electronic filing and is fully accessible through any web-enabled device, including smartphones and tablets. Automated error checking during the filing process eliminates the chance for a rejected filing and having to wait weeks to receive a filing status. Businesses with multiple employees that frequently file can also create a subscriber account, which allows for multiple users and consolidated monthly billing.
The
State
is providing a comprehensive set of online solutions so customers can interact when it is necessary or convenient for them. This has significantly cut processing times. Moreover, this allows many requested documents to be produced instantaneously.