Herrle: Tax puts business owners at a competitive disadvantage.
As Florida’s Legislative Session began, NFIB/Florida came out
of the gates urging a reduced sales tax on commercial leases.
Florida is the only state in the nation that requires business
owners to pay a sales tax on commercial leases.
“This tax often puts business owners in Florida at a
competitive disadvantage with businesses in other states—particularly
businesses in areas that border other states,” said NFIB/Florida Executive
Director Bill Herrle.
A number of tax cut ideas being debated would cut the taxes
paid by businesses to rent office space in Florida. Each proposal takes a
different approach to how that tax should be eliminated, with some favoring a
step down approach eliminating 1 percent of the tax in the first year and
revisiting it in subsequent years.
Another proposal would eliminate sales taxes on commercial
leases where the business owner also owns the building but has it in a
different LLC or corporation to limit liability exposure.
Under current law, the owner of those two corporations would
have to pay sales tax on a lease that he or she created between those two
entities where money may not actually be changing hands.
NFIB/Florida supports efforts to reduce and eliminate sales tax
on commercial rents in a manner that assures small business owners benefit from
the tax reduction.
