Each week, more states continue to propose and/or adopt new legislation in response to the South Dakota v Wayfair US Supreme Court holding on June 21, 2018.  Of the larger states, Florida has remained mysteriously silent on whether it would follow the economic nexus legislation produced by South Dakota and repeated by dozens of other states. On February 15, 2019, Florida broke its silence by proposing Senate Bill 1112, which proposed economic nexus for the Sunshine State.  

The Supreme Court of the United State previously ruled that an out-of-state seller’s liability to collect and remit the tax to the consumer’s state depended on whether the seller had a physical presence in that state.  For internet retailers, a mere shipment of goods into the consumer’s state did not satisfy the physical presence requirement. Therefore, out-of-state sellers did not have to collect sales tax on their sales.  However, following Wayfair, SCOTUS ruled that that the fifty-year-old physical presence requirement was bad law. 

On February 15, 2019, Florida began its quest to gather the low hanging fruit as a result of the Wayfair case.  Nearly identical to most states, Florida’s Bill 1112 adopted an economic nexus standard deeming a company as having physical presence if it engaged in more than 200 separate sales of taxable tangible personal property or services of more than $100,000 of such sales in the previous calendar year.

Further, the Bill also introduced a marketplace facilitator concept into Florida sales tax law.  The marketplace facilitator statutes generally impose sales and use tax collection obligations on third-party facilitators such as Amazon and EBay as well as shared economy type business models like Uber and Lyft.  The proposed legislation has a July 1, 2019 effective date.   

Remote sellers who conduct business in Florida may be affected by this new nexus law once it is implemented.  If you believe this law may affect you, contact the Law Offices of Moffa, Sutton Donnini, PA, as we can discuss your options moving forward with you.

Gerald “Jerry” Donnini II is a shareholder of the Law Offices of Moffa, Sutton, & Donnini, P.A. Mr. Donnini concentrates in the area of state and Federal tax matters, with a heavy emphasis on the tobacco, alcohol, motor fuel and related industries. He also handles a myriad of multi-state state and local tax issues. Mr. Donnini is a co-author for CCH’s Expert Treatise Library: State Sales and Use Tax and writes extensively on multi-state tax issues for SalesTaxSupport.com.  For more information please call us at 888-966-8216.