9 Actions Florida Should Take to Help Taxpayers Impacted by Hurricane Ian

1.     Postpone tax notices and waive penalties or interest for late tax filings in affected areas

2.     Extend the date for residents to take advantage of the tax discounts they would normally receive for paying property taxes and special assessments in November and postpone or defer the deadline for property tax installment payments

3.     Protect individual and business taxpayers from the risks for notices that they will likely not receive because their home or business addresses is not accessible anymore

4.     Issue no new audits in severely impacted areas, extend the statute of limitations and postpone existing audits that haven’t reached the assessment stage because these can’t be responded to while entire communities are still recovering

5.     Create procedures for fairly estimating taxes which can’t be calculated because records have been destroyed by the storm, moving away from the current method which significantly overestimates activity if no records are available

6.     Initiate procedures to offer payment plan assistance for late taxes, rather than resorting to the standard collection methods, like liens, levies, or bank freezes

7.     Retroactively apply the recently passed law that provides property tax refunds for residential property rendered uninhabitable as a result of a catastrophic event

8.     Provide tangible personal property relief and allow n on-residential properties rendered uninhabitable to receive property tax refunds

9.     Get Congress to pass a Disaster Tax Relief Act that includes provisions from past packages, including elements such as an Employee Retention Credit, an enhanced casualty loss deduction, and other relief provisions

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Other Resources

Florida Disaster.biz
FEMA
Florida Department of Financial Services
Florida SBDC
Disaster Contractors Network
Florida Disaster Fund

Florida TaxWatch Statement on Hurricane Ian Recovery

Community Involvement

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Reducing the Communications Services Tax Would Provide Relief to Virtually All Florida Families and Businesses; Florida’s High Tax Rate is Punitive, Distortionary, and Non-Competitive

Since the enactment of the Communications Services Tax (CST) Simplification Act in 2001, Florida TaxWatch has released several reports recommending that the Legislature reduce this burdensome and highly regressive tax on consumers. Florida’s CST is very high, relative to both other states and the sales tax on the purchase of other goods. This high rate makes the tax punitive and distortionary, and makes the state less competitive than other states, including the potential for reducing investment in broadband network infrastructure. 

The Legislature reduced the tax in 2015, but Florida’s rate is still among the highest in the nation. There is currently legislation moving in both chambers (SB 1000 and HB 693) to reduce the rate by one percentage point. 

Florida’s CST is levied on cell and landline phone services, cable and satellite television, video and music streaming, landline phone service, and other services. There is a partial exemption for residential household landline phone service. There are state and local option components to the CST, so tax rates vary across the state. The state CST rate is comprised of both a sales tax (4.92 percent) and a gross receipts tax (2.52 percent). Local taxes vary among jurisdictions, ranging from 0.3 percent to 7.6 percent, with median rate of 5.72 percent.

This puts the top CST rate in Florida at more than 15 percent and the median rate at 13.16 percent, nearly twice as high as the median combined state and local sales tax rate (7 percent) in Florida. When the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) charge of 6.44 percent charged on wireless phone service is included, the tax applied to Floridians’ cell phone bill can exceed 21 percent. 

The Tax Foundation annually tracks tax rates on wireless phone services across the country. Its latest report shows that Florida still has one of the highest tax rates in the country. According to the report, Florida’s average wireless tax rate (combined state, local and federal) of 21.44 percent ranks 9th highest in the nation. 

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