All Floridians Will Now Be Paying Sales Tax for Online Shopping
On Monday of this week (4/19/21) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a plan to require out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases made by Floridians, with the estimated $1 billion a year in revenue going to curb a pair of taxes on Florida businesses.
Many Florida businesses have asked for years, to require out-of-state retailers (on line stores, etc...) to collect sales taxes, to keep the playing field fair..
Those who support of the bill have said that requiring this collection isn’t a tax increase and that Florida retailers have been hurt by out-of-state businesses being able to sell products with tacking on taxes.
This new law was approved 27-12 by the Florida Senate and 93-24 in the Florida House.
This new bill is estimated to produce $1 billion a year, with that money set to go, for the State of Florida unemployment trust fund, which was emptied clean, because of large job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses pay taxes that go into the trust fund and, without another source of money, would have faced higher taxes to replenish the fund.
Before the pandemic, businesses paid $7 per employee in unemployment taxes.
That rate went to $49 this year... without these new funds for that program, estimates say that amount could have jumped to $87.