TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today, Florida TaxWatch (FTW) released The Taxpayers’ Guide to Florida’s FY2023-24 State Budget, providing an overview of Florida’s Fiscal Year 2023-24 state budget, which was passed by the Florida Legislature during the 2023 Legislative Session and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 15, 2023. The guide analyzes all appropriations for the new fiscal year that began on July 1, 2023, net of the governor’s vetoes, including the $117 billion General Appropriations Act (GAA), “back-of-the-bill” spending, and appropriations made in general bills. After the governor’s vetoes, these items total $118.7 billion in spending, which means Florida’s state budget has grown by 28.6 percent in the last three years, the largest three-year growth since the housing bubble and economic boom of Fiscal Year 2004-05 through Fiscal Year 2006-07.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today, Florida TaxWatch (FTW) released a special report, Amendment 2: Florida’s $15 Minimum Wage Initiative analyzing the impacts on businesses and taxpayers of Florida’s $15 minimum wage initiative which will go before the voters this November as Amendment 2. In this report, TaxWatch finds a fundamental problem with increasing the minimum hourly wage to $15 is that while intended to create winners, it creates many more unintended losers, creating the potential for detrimental effects on taxpayers, small business, and low-skill workers. A 2019 report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that while implementing a federal $15 minimum wage could raise 1.3 million Americans out of poverty, as many as 3.7 million Americans who would otherwise be employed would be jobless as a result.