Representative Eskamani Serves as the Ranking Member of the Ways & Means Committee
Orlando, FL: “CS/CS/SB 50: Taxation” passed by the Florida Legislature during the 2021 legislative session, and signed into law by Governor DeSantis on April 19, 2021, requires online out-of-state retailers to collect billions in sales taxes from Florida consumers.
Rather than invest these dollars into consumer tax savings or public services for Floridians, the law temporarily reduced a tax that businesses pay to fund unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, and will permanently reduce the business rent tax from 5.5 percent to 2 percent.
Representative Eskamani’s legislative office has helped tens of thousands of hard-working Floridians who have struggled to obtain Reemployment Assistance from the state because of designed barriers meant to dissuade workers from ever applying for help. And even when Florida workers overcome these intentional obstacles, they still struggle to make ends meet because Florida provides some of the poorest unemployment benefits in the nation.
This system exists because Florida businesses pay, on average, the lowest unemployment tax in the country – even as many of these same businesses, particularly large corporations, are raising prices and reaping record profits.
SB 50 has dramatically worsened these inequities, taking billions more from consumers and giving it all to businesses. Today, Representative Eskamani has requested data from the Florida Department of Revenue to better understand the impact of this new tax on consumers which became a tax break for businesses.
In her letter which you can find here, Representative Eskamani asks for specifics to determine how many, and which, businesses received tax refunds as a result of SB 50 and the billions of dollars Florida consumers are now paying to the state because of it.
Here’s her statement on why this data transparency is important to Floridians:
As the Ranking Member of the House Ways & Means Committee, it is my responsibility to ensure transparency on all of Florida’s tax structures and tax breaks. SB 50 is a new tax on consumers, with billions of dollars in revenue going directly to businesses. Floridians deserve to know which businesses have and will benefit the most.
According to ITEP’s Tax Inequality Index, which measures the impact of each state’s tax system on income inequality, Florida has the 3rd most unfair state and local tax system in the country. Incomes are more unequal in Florida after state and local taxes are collected than before. Read more here.
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