Florida: The State Tax You Don't Owe

No personal income tax — the ban is constitutional, not just statutory

Article VII, section 5(a) of the Florida Constitution provides that no tax on the income of natural persons — individual people, as opposed to corporations — may be levied by the state in excess of the amounts that could be credited against a similar federal tax. The federal government allows no such credit, so the ceiling sits at zero, and it has sat there for the life of the provision: Florida has never collected a personal income tax, and the Legislature cannot start one by statute — only a constitutional amendment could. The practical shape of the ban: there is no Florida individual income tax return, no state withholding from your paycheck, and no state tax on wages, self-employment income, capital gains, pensions, or Social Security. The same section treats estates and inheritances the same way — Florida's estate tax was built to absorb a federal credit that Congress has since eliminated, so no Florida estate or inheritance tax is collected either. 🔊 Listen

Authority: Fla. Const. art. VII, §5(a); Florida Department of Revenue, Corporate Income Tax (the income tax Article VII permits is the corporate one)

What “no income tax” does NOT mean

Three edges, taught plainly. First: your federal return is untouched — the IRS taxes a Floridian's income exactly as it taxes anyone's, and everything else on this platform (the Estimator, the Studio, the desks) applies to you in full. Second: another state can still tax you. A state may tax income sourced inside its own borders no matter where you live — wages for work physically performed there, rent from property there, income of a business operating there — and moving into or out of Florida mid-year usually creates a part-year filing duty in the other state for that year. Florida residency is not a shield against another state's source rules. Third: “no income tax” is not “no taxes.” Florida funds itself at the register, at the closing table, through employers, and through county property taxes — the rest of this desk is that map. 🔊 Listen

Authority: Fla. Const. art. VII, §5(a) (the ban reaches Florida's own levy, not other states'); income sourcing is each taxing state's own law — see the State Desk framework

No state EITC — because there is no state return to claim it on

Many states add an earned income credit of their own on top of the federal one, claimed on the state return. Florida has none — not because a legislature rejected it, but because there is no Florida individual return for it to ride on. The federal EITC itself is completely unaffected: a Florida worker claims it on the federal return exactly like a worker anywhere else, and this platform's credit desks teach it in full. Read every “Florida version” of a federal individual credit the same way: the state layer is absent, the federal layer is whole. 🔊 Listen

Authority: Fla. Const. art. VII, §5(a); the federal earned income credit is IRC §32, claimed on the federal return

The conformity question — for Florida individuals, it answers itself

Every full desk in this State Desk series opens with the same question, and it is worth learning to ask: when federal law creates a deduction, does the state take it too? The federal law of 2025 created four new deductions — for tips, for overtime, the senior deduction, and car-loan interest — claimed on the federal Schedule 1-A. In a taxing state, the answer decides whether they also shrink the state bill: a state whose return starts from federal adjusted gross income may let them flow through, while a state that starts from a different federal line, or that expressly adds them back, does not. Florida's answer for individuals is the simplest on the map: there is no Florida income-tax base for the deductions to flow into or be added back from, so the conformity question never arises — here the deductions are a federal matter, whole and entire. The question is live one desk over, for corporations: Florida's corporate tax starts from federal taxable income and applies Florida's own adjustments on top, so corporations meet conformity as a real, annual computation — taught in the corporate card below. 🔊 Listen

Authority: Fla. Const. art. VII, §5(a); Fla. Stat. §220.13 (adjusted federal income — the corporate starting point); the federal deductions are claimed on Schedule 1-A — see Money Nobody Knew

Reemployment tax — the one Florida payroll tax, paid by employers only

Florida's unemployment insurance runs on the reemployment tax, and it is the employer's cost alone — it may not be deducted from an employee's pay, and there is no state income-tax withholding beside it. The tax applies to the first $7,000 of wages paid to each employee in a calendar year; wages above that line are excess wages and are not taxed. A new employer starts at 2.7% and stays there until it has reported for 10 quarters; after that, the Department of Revenue experience-rates the account each year between a floor of 0.1% and a ceiling of 5.4%, based on the benefits charged against it — for 2026, that is $7 per employee at the floor and $378 per employee at the ceiling, on the full wage base. Wages are reported and the tax paid quarterly on the Employer's Quarterly Report, Form RT-6; registration runs through the Florida Business Tax Application, Form DR-1. 🔊 Listen

Form: Form RT-6 (quarterly) — registration on Form DR-1

Authority: Fla. Stat. §443.131; Florida Department of Revenue, Reemployment Tax Rate Information (initial rate 0.0270; statutory floor 0.0010 and ceiling 0.0540; 2026 minimum $7 and maximum $378 per employee, on wages up to $7,000)

Corporate income tax — 5.5%, with the first $50,000 exempt

The one income tax Florida does levy falls on corporations: C corporations — and entities that elect to be taxed as corporations federally — pay 5.5% of their Florida net income, after an exemption that shelters the first $50,000 (members of a controlled group share one exemption between them). The computation starts from federal taxable income and applies Florida's additions and subtractions to reach adjusted federal income, then apportions and allocates to Florida. The annual return is the Florida Corporate Income/Franchise Tax Return, Form F-1120 — the form itself prints the 5.5% rate and the $50,000 exemption on its face. Pass-through businesses stand outside the tax: S corporations, partnerships, and LLCs taxed as either generally owe no Florida entity-level income tax, and their income reaches owners who — as the headline card teaches — owe Florida nothing individually. Sole proprietors likewise file no Florida income return. 🔊 Listen

Form: Form F-1120 (annual)

Authority: Fla. Stat. §220.11 (the 5.5% rate), §220.13 (adjusted federal income), §220.14 (the $50,000 exemption); Florida Form F-1120 and the F-1120N instructions

Sales tax — 6% state rate, and the county decides the rest

Florida's general sales tax is 6% on most retail sales, rentals, and a defined set of services, collected by the seller and remitted on Form DR-15. On top of the state rate, counties levy a discretionary sales surtax under sections 212.054 and 212.055 — voter-approved, purpose-specific, and different in nearly every county; the Department of Revenue publishes the whole map each year in Form DR-15DSS. For calendar year 2026, Broward County's total surtax is 1% — the charter county transportation surtax, in place since January 1, 2019 and scheduled through December 31, 2048 — so the combined rate in Broward is 7%. One mechanic catches buyers of big-ticket items: the county surtax applies only to the first $5,000 of the sales price of a single item of tangible personal property; the state 6% has no such cap. Counties revise surtaxes at the January 1 line — the current DR-15DSS, not memory, is the rate source. 🔊 Listen

Form: Form DR-15 (dealer return) — county rates: Form DR-15DSS, revised annually

Authority: Fla. Stat. §212.05 (the 6% rate), §§212.054–212.055 (county surtax; the $5,000 single-item cap); Florida Department of Revenue, DR-15DSS (R. 11/25) for calendar year 2026: Broward total surtax 1%, January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2048

Homestead — up to $50,000 off the value your property tax is figured on

Florida's homestead exemption subtracts up to $50,000 from the assessed value of your permanent home before the millage is applied. The structure has two layers: the first $25,000 comes off against every tax, schools included; an additional exemption of up to $25,000 applies to the slice of assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000, against every tax except school taxes. The additional layer is no longer a frozen number — beginning in 2025 it is adjusted for inflation each year, so the Department of Revenue and your property appraiser publish the operative amount for the year; the layers above are the constitutional frame. You claim the exemption once, with your county property appraiser, and the deadline is the one date on this desk that cannot be negotiated: the application must be filed by March 1 of the tax year (§196.011), and you must own the home and make it your permanent residence as of January 1. Homestead then does a second, quieter job: the Save Our Homes cap limits later increases in your home's assessed value to the lesser of 3% or the change in the consumer price index each year, and if you move within Florida, portability can carry up to $500,000 of the accumulated cap benefit to the new homestead. Broward readers file with — and verify against — the Broward County Property Appraiser. One watch item, printed as a pointer rather than a figure: Florida voters took up a further homestead amendment in November 2026 that would raise the non-school layer in steps beginning with the 2027 tax year; until the Department of Revenue publishes the operative amounts, the frame above is the law in force, and your August TRIM notice is where a change will first show. 🔊 Listen

Authority: Fla. Const. art. VII, §6 (the exemption) and §4(d) (Save Our Homes); Fla. Stat. §196.011 (the March 1 application), §196.031 (the exemption), §193.155 (the assessment cap and portability); Broward County Property Appraiser (filing and deadlines)

Tangible personal property — the business tax return filed with your county, not the state

Florida taxes the equipment a business uses — furniture, fixtures, computers, machinery, tools — as tangible personal property, and the tax is a county affair: the return, Form DR-405, goes to the property appraiser of the county where the property sat on January 1, not to Tallahassee. The filing deadline is April 1, and the timely return does double duty: it is also the application for the $25,000 exemption each return carries, which wipes the tax out entirely for a small operation whose assessed equipment value sits at or under the line — file late, and the exemption is lost for that year, penalties aside. Household goods and personal effects are exempt under a separate section; it is business-use property that belongs on the DR-405. 🔊 Listen

Form: Form DR-405 — filed with the county property appraiser by April 1

Authority: Fla. Stat. §193.062 (the April 1 filing), §196.183 (the $25,000 exemption), §196.181 (household goods exempt); Broward County Property Appraiser, Tangible Personal Property (the return is the exemption application)

The closing-table taxes — documentary stamps and the intangible tax

Two quiet taxes ride on Florida real estate paper, both paid at recording. The documentary stamp tax falls on the documents themselves: on a deed, 70 cents for each $100 of the price (§201.02) — Miami-Dade is the standing exception, taxing deeds at 60 cents per $100 with a county surtax of its own; on a promissory note or mortgage, 35 cents for each $100 of the debt (§201.08), with the tax capped at $2,450 for obligations not secured by Florida real property. Beside it sits the nonrecurring intangible tax: 2 mills — $2 for each $1,000 — charged once, at recording, on the amount of debt secured by a mortgage on Florida real estate (§199.133). Who customarily pays which stamp is set by the contract and local custom, not by this desk — the rates and the triggers are the statute's, and your closing disclosure is where to verify them. 🔊 Listen

Authority: Fla. Stat. §201.02 (deeds), §201.08 (notes and mortgages; the $2,450 cap), §199.133 (the nonrecurring intangible tax, 2 mills); Florida Department of Revenue, Documentary Stamp Tax

When the storm is Florida's — the federal disaster desk takes it from there

Florida's most consequential tax events arrive as weather. When the IRS postpones federal deadlines for a Florida disaster — as it does, county by county, under its section 7508A authority — the postponement is keyed to the address the IRS has on file for you, and it moves federal filing and payment dates wholesale; there is no Florida return waiting on a parallel state date, because for individuals there is no Florida return at all. Casualty losses from a Florida storm are likewise claimed where they have always been claimed — on the federal return, under the disaster rules this platform teaches in full, including the rule that from 2026 lets a state-declared disaster qualify. If a storm is your situation, the federal desk is the desk. 🔊 Listen

Authority: IRC §7508A; Disaster Mode teaches the postponement and casualty mechanics from IRS sources