Home Depot Paint Fees Flow to Unregistered Nonprofit, Raising Alarms

Marylanders buying paint at Home Depot are now paying a state-mandated fee at checkout, with 100% of the revenue directed to a nonprofit that had never registered with Maryland as required by law.

An investigation found PaintCare's name absent from the Maryland Secretary of State's nonprofit registry, and not as a minor paperwork gap. State law requires nonprofits operating in Maryland to register annually and submit financial reports. According to that registry, PaintCare had not filed at all.

The program launched April 1, adding fees to every paint purchase statewide: $1.15 per one-gallon container, $2.25 for containers up to five gallons, and $0.50 for anything between a half pint and one gallon. Half-pint containers and smaller carry no fee. Maryland became the 12th state, along with the District of Columbia, to adopt the PaintCare model, which was established by paint manufacturers through the American Coatings Association. Lawmakers passed the enabling legislation in 2024, and the Maryland Department of the Environment signed off on PaintCare's program plan in October 2025, clearing the way for the April launch.

State Del. Kathy Szeliga, who voted against the bill, did not hold back. "This was a bad idea from the beginning," she said, adding that "their top executives are making 1-point 3 million a year." Political analyst John Dedie questioned how state officials allowed an unregistered organization to begin collecting fees in the first place. "It sounds like someone with the state is asleep at the wheel," Dedie said. "They should have made sure the parties taking care of this are actually registered."

The program is built around more than 100 drop-off sites across Maryland, with a first-year collection target of roughly 350,000 gallons of leftover paint. Nationally, PaintCare has managed approximately 85 million gallons across other state programs over more than a decade of operation. In those states, no comparable registration controversy emerged.

Home Depot sits at the center of this on two fronts. The retailer's paint departments function as both fee collection points and program drop-off locations, putting associates directly in front of customers who have seen the local coverage and want answers at the register. The Maryland Department of the Environment oversees the overall program, but no state official had explained how PaintCare was permitted to begin receiving fees before meeting the registration requirement the law clearly mandates. Until that accounting comes, every gallon rung up at a Maryland register adds to a growing pool of revenue flowing to an organization without legal standing to collect it in the state.