Tax Department cautions that expanded landlord-register fields could hinder renter-credit processing and raise privacy concerns

Rebecca Sam Roth, deputy commissioner at the Department of Taxes, told the House General & Housing Committee that the department’s landlord certificate — the form used to verify claims for the renter credit — already provides many data points and that adding the unit-level survey fields in Act 181 of 2024 risks reducing compliance and slowing payments to eligible low-income renters.

Roth said recent reform of the renter-credit system substantially reduced paperwork and corrected confidentiality problems; as a result, the department now issues 96 percent of renter-credit claims within 60 days, compared with about 25 percent under the old system. She said adding “unnecessary and problematic survey fields to the form as prescribed by Act 181 of 2024 would make the problem worse.”

Department analysts explained the practical differences between a…