Maryland’s tax systems are back online after a planned, two-week shutdown, with the state officially launching Maryland Tax Connect for individual taxpayers Sept. 1 — the state’s first system-wide tax technology overhaul in more than three decades.
The new portal, available at MDTaxConnect.gov, lets individuals and businesses file returns, make payments, check refund status, view account information, and manage tax obligations in one place. It replaces legacy systems including iFile and the state’s previous online bill-payment platform, which the Comptroller’s Office says ran on COBOL, a programming language dating to the 1960s, on an aging mainframe computer.
The Aug. 21-31 outage that preceded the launch allowed the office to migrate and validate more than 4 billion tax records onto the new cloud-based system. “This migration involves transferring more than 4 billion tax records from legacy systems into a modern, secure platform,” Chief Information Officer Rob O’Connor said. “The work required to do that accurately and safely requires a planned period of downtime.” Officials scheduled the shutdown for late August specifically because it’s historically the lowest-activity stretch in Maryland’s tax calendar. Hundreds of Comptroller’s Office staff contributed more than 2.6 million hours to the project, assisting vendors, training staff, testing systems, and building out the new platform.
