Montgomery County Plastic and Paper Bag Tax Records

A five-cent charge on each paper or plastic carryout bag was enacted in Montgomery County, Maryland, on May 3, 2011. The dataset captures information since the law went into effect, with retailers retaining one cent of each five-cent charge. Data is updated monthly by Montgomery County of Maryland.

Use Cases

• Modeling retail bag usage trends based on the point-of-sale charge data.
• Assessing the financial impact of the tax on retailers based on the one-cent retailer retention.
• Evaluating policy effectiveness over time based on the monthly update frequency and data since 2011.

Strengths

• Data collection is tied to a specific legislative act (Bill 8-11) enacted on May 3, 2011.
• Update frequency is explicitly stated as monthly.
• Data is provided in multiple machine-readable formats (XML, RDF, JSON, CSV).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Montgomery County of Maryland

Collection Method

Captured from retail establishments as mandated by Bill 8-11.

Time Range

Since May 3, 2011.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 08 02:07:48.027360; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Montgomery County, Maryland, USA.