Here’s some good news about taxes (and how often does that happen?): The Florida sales tax on commercial leases will probably be reduced this year, ComReal VP Ed Redlich tells us. If all goes well, there’ll be a phase out of the tax all together.
Recently Ed became the president of the Realtors Commercial Alliance of Miami for 2014, and one of the issues of concern to the org is taxation. Recently, he says, Gov. Scott said he intends to push for a decrease in the tax by about a half a percentage point. Also, there are two bills before the legislature that would begin a complete phase-out of the tax, SB 176 and HB 11, beginning by lowering the rate from 6% to 5%. (You can read those legislative bills to your kids at bedtime because that's sweeter than any fairy tale.)
The tax isn't just a pain in the fiscal butt for Florida businesses. (Florida tax collectors probably don’t look much like this Old Masters painting of collectors, but we can dream, can’t we?). Ed says it harms the state's competitiveness. “Florida is the only state in the union that charges a sales tax on commercial rental payments,” he tells us. “Economic development organizations from other states use this fault as a competitive advantage against us to lure companies away--that simply means that Florida loses jobs every year.”
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