'Lackluster' session brings few big wins but no big defeats
NFIB State Executive Director Bill Herrle released the following statement today following the conclusion of the 2024 regular session of the Florida Legislature:
“The 2024 session will go down as one of the more lackluster sessions for small business owners in recent memory. We got a few key wins on employment law, organized retail theft, and the sizing of wine containers, and we stopped a lot of bad legislation from moving forward.
“However, at the 11th hour of session, all of the money allocated for the business rent tax cut was repurposed in favor of reimbursing users of toll roads 50% of their tolls charged if they have over 35 transactions in a month. This provision will no doubt help commuters, but it came at the expense of a cut in the business rent tax.“We expected the 2024 session to be a bit underwhelming largely because the legislature had a historic 2023 session where they passed dozens of NFIB priorities and made big changes to Florida’s tort laws. When you look at the two sessions together, Florida’s small businesses had a monumental legislative cycle, getting major wins for small business owners.
“We’ve already started collecting ideas for the 2025 legislative session and will have a few bills that got left behind that we’ll go after again next year.”Below is a small snapshot of some of the bills that passed or failed this session that might impact your business.Bills that passed:
- HB 49 – Reduces regulations on businesses that employ minors and moves Florida more in line with federal employment laws for minors.
- HB 433 – Bans local governments from enacting predictive scheduling ordinances which penalize businesses that make changes to employee work schedules after they publish them.
- HB 549 – Increases criminal penalties for organized retail theft.
- HB 583 – Removes arbitrary sizing restrictions on wine containers.
- HB 7073 – This is the 2024 tax package that contains a cut to homeowners insurance premium taxes and a few sales tax holidays. The business rent tax cut and the increase in the sales tax collection allowance were removed yesterday on the floor of the Senate in favor of a toll reduction.
Bills that failed:
- HJR 7075 – Would have doubled the Tangible Personal Property Exemption to $50,000
- SB 1276 – Would have provided much-needed guardrails for litigation financing.
- HB 1289 – Would have made changes to Florida’s unemployment compensation laws that benefited employers.
- Business rent tax cuts
- An increase in the sales tax collection allowance
