Florida Sales Tax Basics for Business Owners

Florida sales tax looks simple from the outside: one state rate, no income tax to worry about, a monthly return. Then you open a store in Tampa and discover that the rate on your receipt is 7.5%, not 6%, that a $9,000 espresso machine is taxed differently from a $900 one, that the return is late on a day nobody remembers, and that the state wants tax on things you bought, not just things you sold.

This guide covers the rules a Florida business owner actually runs into, with the figures current as of September 2026, and ends with a worked example for a Tampa retailer. If you also sell into other states, read this first and then our multi-state playbook.

The rate: 6% state plus your county's surtax

Florida's general sales tax rate is 6%. On top of it, most counties levy a discretionary sales surtax, and the surtax rate depends on the county where the goods are delivered, not where your business sits. For a shop in Tampa that delivers around the Bay area, that means several combined rates in a normal week.

The surtax has a ceiling that retailers of big-ticket items often miss: it applies only to the first $5,000 of the sales price of a single item of tangible personal property, while the 6% state tax applies to the whole price. A $9,000 commercial espresso machine delivered in Hillsborough carries $540 of state tax plus $75 of surtax (1.5% of $5,000), for $615 total rather than $675. The cap is per item, not per invoice, and it does not apply to services or short-term rentals. County rates are published every year in the Department of Revenue's Discretionary Sales Surtax Information (DR-15DSS), and several Tampa Bay surtaxes have sunset dates, so check the new sheet each January.

What Florida taxes, and what it leaves alone

Florida taxes the sale, rental and repair of tangible personal property, admissions, transient lodging of six months or less, and a short list of services. Unlike Texas or Pennsylvania, Florida does not tax services in general; it names the ones it taxes. Under section 212.05(1)(i), Florida Statutes, those are detective, burglar protection and other protection services (guards, alarm monitoring, investigations); nonresidential cleaning services (janitorial work in commercial buildings); and nonresidential building pest control. Residential cleaning and residential pest control are not taxable, and neither are professional services such as accounting, legal work, consulting or marketing.

The biggest recent change is commercial rent. Florida was for decades unusual in taxing rent on commercial property, most recently at 2% state tax plus the county surtax. That tax was repealed for rental periods beginning on or after October 1, 2025, per TIP 25A01-04. If a landlord is still adding sales tax to office or warehouse rent for later periods, question it. Rent for occupancy before October 2025 stays taxable even if paid late, and parking, boat docking, aircraft storage and short-term lodging remain taxable.

Services attached to goods follow the goods. If you repair equipment and supply parts, the entire charge, parts and labor, is taxable; a labor-only repair with no parts is not. Installation labor that is part of a sale of tangible goods is part of the taxable price even when listed separately. Software delivered online or accessed in the cloud is not taxable in Florida because nothing tangible changes hands, though software shipped on physical media is. A separately stated delivery charge is exempt only when the customer could have picked the item up or arranged their own shipping; a mandatory "shipping and handling" line is taxed with the goods. Our guide to sales tax on services goes deeper on the service questions.

Registering with the Department of Revenue

You must register before you make your first taxable sale, using the Florida Business Tax Application, Form DR-1, which is easiest to file online at floridarevenue.com. Once registered you receive a Certificate of Registration (DR-11) and a Florida Annual Resale Certificate (DR-13).

The resale certificate is the document that lets you buy inventory tax-free from suppliers. It expires every December 31 and is reissued for the following year, so you and your vendors need the current one on file. Two rules trip up new owners. First, the certificate is only for items you will resell or re-rent; using it to buy your own computers, fixtures or office supplies is tax evasion, not tax planning. Second, when a customer hands you a resale certificate, keep a copy or verify it through the Department's online tool, because an audit will assess you for any exempt sale you cannot document.

Filing frequency, due dates, and the electronic filing rule

The Department assigns your filing frequency based on how much tax you collect in a year, and reviews it annually. The return is Form DR-15, and it reports gross sales, exempt sales, taxable amount, tax, and surtax.

Whatever the frequency, returns and payments are due on the first day of the month after the period ends and are late after the 20th. If you paid $5,000 or more in sales and use tax during the state's previous fiscal year (July 1 through June 30), you must file and pay electronically the following calendar year, and almost every business with a storefront crosses that line. An electronic payment started on the 20th may not settle in time, so do not wait for the last day.

Filing electronically and on time earns a collection allowance of 2.5% of the first $1,200 of tax due, capped at $30 per return. It is small, but it is free, and paper filers do not get it. Filing late costs a penalty of 10% of the tax due with a $50 minimum, plus interest at a floating rate the Department resets every January 1 and July 1. The penalty applies even to a return you file on time but pay late.

Use tax: the tax on what you buy

Use tax is the mirror image of sales tax. When you buy something taxable for your business and the seller does not charge Florida tax, typically an out-of-state vendor or an online seller that is not registered here, you owe the 6% plus surtax yourself and report it on the same DR-15. The same rule applies when you pull an item out of inventory for your own use, and to items bought elsewhere and brought into Florida within six months of purchase. Auditors look for it in fixed-asset purchases and credit card statements: a $12,000 display system bought from a Georgia supplier that charged no tax means $795 of use tax due in Hillsborough County (6% of $12,000, plus 1.5% of the first $5,000).

2026 sales tax holidays and permanent exemptions

The Legislature rewrote the holiday calendar in 2026. The back-to-school holiday is now an annual event and ran July 20 through August 20, 2026, exempting clothing and footwear at $100 or less per item, school supplies at $50 or less, learning aids at $30 or less, and personal computers and accessories at $1,500 or less. A hunting, fishing and camping holiday runs September 1 through December 31, 2026. Small propane tanks (20 pounds or less) are now permanently exempt, and impact-resistant windows and doors are exempt at the point of sale through June 30, 2029. The Department publishes a Tax Information Publication for each holiday with the exact item list; retailers must honor them, and point-of-sale systems need the rules loaded before day one.

Worked example: a Tampa retailer's month

Consider a kitchen and housewares store on Kennedy Boulevard with $85,000 of taxable sales in October 2026, all delivered in Hillsborough County, plus $6,000 of sales to a restaurant that presented a valid resale certificate. Tax due on the taxable sales is $5,100 of state tax (6%) and $1,275 of surtax (1.5%), for $6,375. The $6,000 resale sale goes on the return as an exempt sale with no tax. The store paid more than $5,000 of tax last fiscal year, so it files monthly and electronically; the October return and payment are due November 1 and late after November 20.

Filing on time earns the $30 collection allowance (2.5% of the first $1,200), so the payment is $6,345. If the owner forgets until December 5, the penalty is $637.50 (10% of $6,375) plus interest, and the collection allowance disappears. One late month costs more than a year of on-time allowances.

Two more lines on that return. The store sold one $7,200 commercial range in October: state tax of $432 on the full price, surtax of $75 on the first $5,000, and the $2,200 above the cap goes on the line for amounts exempt from surtax. It also bought $3,000 of shelving from an online seller that charged no tax, so it reports $225 of use tax (7.5% of $3,000) on the same return.

Common mistakes

The mistakes we correct most often in Florida books are predictable. Owners charge their own county's rate on every sale instead of the delivery county's rate. They apply surtax to the full price of items over $5,000. They treat "shipping and handling" as exempt when it was mandatory. They skip use tax entirely, which is the most common audit adjustment we see for small businesses. They let the resale certificate lapse at year-end and keep buying tax-free on the old one. And they record sales tax collected as revenue in QuickBooks, which inflates income and makes the DR-15 impossible to reconcile; our QuickBooks cleanup guide explains how to spot that one.

When to get help

Florida sales tax is manageable for a single-location business with simple products, and many owners handle it themselves for years. It stops being simple when you deliver across county lines, sell items over $5,000, mix taxable and exempt customers, sell online into other states, or receive a notice about a missed return. Those are the situations where a return filed a little wrong every month adds up to a real assessment, and where our sales tax compliance service earns its keep: we set up the rates, prepare and file the DR-15 from your books, track the certificates, and handle the Department when it writes.

If you are not sure your returns are right, request a 20-minute fit call and bring your last three DR-15s and a sales report. A quick reconciliation usually tells us everything.

Jenny Gao, CPA, EA

Founder of Balance Partners. Florida-licensed CPA and IRS Enrolled Agent with more than a decade of accounting and tax experience. Jenny writes and reviews every guide on this site. About Jenny

This article is general educational information for U.S. business owners and is not accounting, tax, legal, payroll or financial advice for your situation. Rules change and vary by entity, state and facts. Balance Partners, LLC does not provide audit, review or other attest services. Last reviewed September 14, 2026.