It sounds like a bad punchline: At a time when businesses are having difficulty finding and retaining qualified workers, one state wants to use taxpayer dollars to pay businesses so their employees work less.
That’s the genesis of a bill introduced in the Maryland General Assembly last month, which seeks to study shifting to a standardized four-day workweek. While businesses should certainly reassess how they manage their employees — a move that the pandemic accelerated via the explosion in remote work — they don’t need taxpayer dollars, or government micro-management, to do so.
Paying Businesses to Reduce Working Hours
The Maryland legislation creates a tax credit program, purportedly to sunset after five years, to provide subsidies to businesses. The program would reduce state income taxes for two years for businesses with at least 30 employees that switch from a five-day workweek to a four-day workweek without reducing employee pay.
The bill would fund the subsidy program with up to $750,000 for each of the five years. It would also “encourage governmental units to institute a four-day work week” — which Maryland taxpayers may not appreciate, particularly if it has any effect on the quality of services they receive.
The legislation itself seems like a solution in search of a problem. If businesses find it in their best interests to change or reduce working hours, they will do so. They shouldn’t need taxpayer funding to alter their business practices. And these types of subsidy programs will come with myriad new regulations,
