“Two powerful Maryland politicians want that ad chasing you around the Internet to pay the state for the privilege of collecting your data.
Maryland’s current and former Senate presidents have proposed a novel way to pioneer taxes on targeted digital advertising, a plan they estimate could deliver more than $100 million per year to help pay for a sweeping education overhaul.
Senate President Bill Ferguson, the Baltimore Democrat who drafted the plan, said he was inspired by economist Paul Romer, a Nobel laureate who suggested earlier this year that such a tax could use market forces to shift tech companies’ business models — creating a disincentive for profiting off the collection of private data.”
