Florida sales tax: 6% base rate, exemptions & what Canadians need to know

Why the register never matches the shelf

The first culture shock of a Canadian's Florida winter is not the heat, it is the cash register. Canada prices most things tax-out too, but a Canadian shopper knows their home rate by heart; in Florida the rate changes when you cross a county line, groceries ring up differently from a sandwich, and the furniture store quotes a tax the electronics store seems to contradict. None of it is improvisation. Florida sales tax is one state statute plus one county-by-county table, and twenty minutes with this page makes every receipt of the season predictable.

This guide covers the tax you pay as a consumer: on shopping, dining, furnishing the condo, and the everyday spending of a winter. The taxes on renting your property out, the bed taxes on short stays, and the closing taxes of a purchase live in their own guides and are linked where they touch this one.

The state layer: 6 percent under chapter 212

Florida levies a 6 percent state sales tax on retail sales of tangible personal property, along with admissions, transient accommodations, and a short list of taxed services. It is the state's fiscal backbone precisely because Florida has no personal income tax: the money arrives at the till instead of on a return, which is why the rate feels present everywhere from the supermarket's non-food aisles to the marina.

Verified fact: the Florida sales tax is imposed at 6 percent under chapter 212, Florida Statutes, with discretionary county surtaxes authorized by s. 212.054 and published county by county on the Department of Revenue's annual DR-15DSS information sheet; current county surtax rates range from 0.5 to 1.5 percent, and some counties levy none. Source: Florida Statutes ch. 212 and Florida DOR, Discretionary Sales Surtax, consulted June 9, 2026.

Most consumer services, by contrast, are simply outside the base: the haircut, the accountant, the pool service bill arrive untaxed. The Florida instinct to verify is the opposite of the Canadian one: here the question is whether the item is taxed at all, not which of two taxes applies.

The county layer: the surtax and the 5,000 USD cap

Nearly every county adds a discretionary sales surtax on top of the state's 6 percent, adopted by local referendum and earmarked for schools, transport, or infrastructure. That is the entire mystery of the 6.5 percent receipt in one county and the 7 percent receipt in the next. The authoritative list is the DOR's DR-15DSS sheet, reissued every November; check your county's line once each season, because rates expire and renew on local ballots.

The cap is the part worth real money to a snowbird furnishing a condo. The surtax applies only to the first 5,000 USD of the sales amount of a single item of tangible personal property. The state 6 percent runs on the full price, but the county's extra point stops at 5,000. On a 9,000 USD sofa-and-sectional sold as one item in a 1 percent county, you pay 6 percent on 9,000 plus 1 percent on 5,000: 590 USD, not 630. The cap does not apply to services, admissions, or short-term accommodation charges, which is why your hotel folio shows the full combined rate on every dollar.

Which county's rate applies: the delivery rule

One refinement turns the county table from trivia into a tool. The surtax that applies is the surtax of the county where the goods are delivered into the buyer's hands. Walk out of the store with the television and you pay the store's county rate; have the sectional delivered to your condo and the invoice should carry your home county's surtax, whatever the showroom's county charges. The DOR's surtax guidance (publication GT-800019) spells the rule out for dealers, which is why reputable furniture stores ask for the delivery address before quoting tax.

For a snowbird this cuts both ways. Shopping across a county line saves nothing on delivered goods, since your own county's rate follows the truck. But it also means a delivered big-ticket purchase never costs you a neighbouring county's higher surtax, and on a capped item the difference is bounded anyway: the spread between county rates applies to at most the first 5,000 USD of a single item, 50 USD of stakes per point of surtax. Worth knowing, rarely worth driving for.

What is exempt at the register

Verified fact: under s. 212.08, Florida Statutes, food products for human consumption, the grocery basket of cereals, meat, fish, dairy, produce, and similar staples, are exempt from sales tax, as are prescription drugs and certain medical items; food prepared or sold for immediate consumption is taxable. Source: Florida Statutes s. 212.08, consulted June 9, 2026.

In practice the supermarket splits your cart for you: the chicken, milk, and vegetables ring at zero while the rotisserie chicken, the deli sandwich, and the household goods ring at the combined rate. Restaurants are taxable from the first dollar, drive-through included. The pharmacy works the same way: the prescription is exempt, the vitamins and sunscreen beside it are not. Canadians will recognize the logic, it rhymes with the GST treatment of basic groceries, but the line sits in a slightly different place, and the surprise is usually the prepared-food side.

Use tax: the companion rule most consumers never meet

Chapter 212 pairs the sales tax with a use tax at the same 6 percent on goods bought untaxed elsewhere and brought into Florida for use, with credit for sales tax lawfully paid in another state. For a consumer, the practical footprint is small: established online marketplaces collect Florida tax at checkout, so the classic mail-order gap has mostly closed. Where it still surfaces is the genuine untaxed purchase, the out-of-state private sale shipped to your condo, and, at much larger scale, boats and vehicles, where registration is the enforcement point. If a seller's quote is sweetened by "no tax, we deliver from out of state", the quote is describing a tax you owe, not a tax you escaped.

Short stays and rentals: where sales tax meets the bed taxes

Transient accommodation, stays of six months or less, is taxable under chapter 212, and counties stack their tourist development tax on top. As a guest you simply see both on the folio. As a Canadian owner renting your unit short term, you are the dealer collecting them, with registration and remittance obligations covered in the guides to sales tax on short-term rentals and the county-by-county TDT. The platforms collect part of the stack in many counties, rarely all of it everywhere; the dedicated pages map who collects what.

Cars, boats, and the border cases

Vehicles and vessels are sales-taxed like other goods, with the county surtax capped at the first 5,000 USD, and titling is where the state checks. The cross-border wrinkles deserve their own attention: a snowbird buying a car to keep in Florida pays Florida tax like any resident purchase, while exporting a vehicle home to Canada changes both the Florida side and what CBSA collects at the bridge. The full sequence, including the partial-exemption rules for nonresident purchasers and the registration mechanics, is in the guide to buying a Florida vehicle as a Canadian snowbird, with the import half in the vehicle import guide.

The leisure line: admissions, golf, and the marina

The category that surprises Canadians most is admissions, because much of it is untaxed or differently taxed at home. In Florida, paid admissions are taxable under chapter 212 at the same combined rate as goods: the theme park ticket, the spring training seat, the dinner show, the gym membership, the green fee. A snowbird couple spending 1,500 USD on a season of golf and outings in a 1 percent surtax county is paying about 105 USD of tax inside those receipts without ever seeing a shelf price. Marina charges follow the same gravity for transient dockage, while the boat itself, as goods, rides the TPP rules and the surtax cap from the sections above.

None of this changes behaviour much, the tee time costs what it costs, but it belongs in the season's budget arithmetic: the 6 to 7.5 percent applies to most of a Florida winter's fun, not just its shopping.

Sales tax holidays: real, annual, and not worth planning around

Each year the legislature enacts temporary holidays exempting categories like back-to-school supplies or disaster-preparedness gear for fixed windows. They are real savings on the right weekend and a poor anchor for any plan: the categories, caps, and dates are re-legislated annually. Check the DOR's current-year list when you are already buying in the category; do not schedule the furniture truck around a rumour. Typical range: holiday windows in recent years have clustered in late summer and around hurricane season, with item price caps that exclude most big-ticket purchases, June 2026 observation.

No, there is no tourist refund

Visitors regularly ask where to reclaim Florida sales tax at the airport, by analogy with European VAT schemes. Nowhere: Florida has no general sales tax refund for departing tourists, and kiosks promising one are reselling paperwork that does not exist for this state. The tax is simply part of the price of the winter. And the journey home has its own ledger: what you save in Florida can also be taxed on the way home: purchases beyond your personal exemption are assessed at the border under the CBSA duty and tax calculation rules. Keep the receipts; they serve both ends of the trip.

Florida versus home: the full sales-tax map

The comparison Canadians actually want is the register-to-register one. Here it is, at the levels where each tax lives.

Verified fact: the Canadian rates above are the CRA's published GST/HST rates, including Nova Scotia's reduction of its HST to 14 percent effective April 1, 2025. Source: Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST rates by province, consulted June 9, 2026.

Opinion: at the register, Florida is cheaper than every Canadian province except Alberta, usually by 5 to 8 points. Treat that as a grocery-and-gadgets observation, not a fiscal verdict: Florida recovers its budget through property taxes and insurance-adjacent costs that this site documents at length, and a snowbird's true cost of living arbitrage is settled there, not at the supermarket.

A worked example: one Saturday of shopping, February 2027

Suppose a snowbird couple equips the condo in a county with a 1 percent surtax (check yours on the DR-15DSS). The cart: 180 USD of groceries, a 96 USD restaurant dinner, a 1,200 USD television, and a 6,500 USD sectional sofa sold as a single item.

The groceries ring at zero. The dinner takes the full combined 7 percent: 6.72 USD. The television, ordinary TPP under the cap, also takes 7 percent: 84 USD. The sofa splits: 6 percent state tax on the full 6,500 (390 USD) plus 1 percent county surtax on the first 5,000 only (50 USD), so 440 USD rather than the 455 a naive 7 percent would suggest. Day's total tax: 530.72 USD on 7,976 USD of spending, an effective 6.7 percent. Typical range: at an illustrative 1.35 CAD per USD, that is about 716 CAD of tax; the same taxable basket at Quebec's combined rate of about 14.975 percent would carry roughly 1,168 CAD, and in Alberta roughly 390 CAD. Rates verified as above; the conversion is illustrative.

The arithmetic teaches the three reflexes: know your county's line on the DR-15DSS, let the grocery exemption work by buying unprepared, and remember the cap when a single big item crosses 5,000 USD.

Common mistakes

The recurring sales-tax errors of a Florida winter are small individually and add up across a season.

• Budgeting from shelf prices. Every posted price is before tax. On a season's discretionary spending the gap is hundreds of dollars; build 7 percent into the mental math and the register stops winning.
• Assuming one Florida rate. The county surtax moves the combined rate between 6 and 7.5 percent, and big purchases are sometimes worth a county line. Verify on the DR-15DSS, not on a neighbour's recollection.
• Reading the grocery exemption too broadly. Prepared and immediate-consumption food is taxable: the rotisserie chicken, the food court, the catering tray for the golf group.
• Expecting a tourist refund at departure. Florida has none. Any fee paid toward one is lost.
• Forgetting the northbound ledger. The CBSA assesses purchases above your exemption at the border; the receipts that proved the price in Florida are the same ones that settle the duty conversation in April.
• Confusing sales tax with the bed taxes on a rental. An owner collecting nightly rent owes the sales tax and the county TDT as separate obligations, each with its own registration; the rental guides walk the stack.

Season checklist

1. Look up your county on the current DR-15DSS in November or on arrival; note the combined rate.
2. Set the mental markup at that rate for all non-grocery spending.
3. Buy groceries unprepared where the exemption does the work.
4. For any single item over 5,000 USD, confirm the surtax cap is applied on the invoice.
5. Keep big-ticket receipts in one envelope: warranty, insurance, and the CBSA declaration all want them.
6. If buying a vehicle or boat, read the dedicated guide first; titling is where tax shortcuts surface.
7. If renting your unit out, register for the sales tax and TDT before the first booking, per the rental guides.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my receipt say 7 percent when the state rate is 6?

Your county levies a 1 percent discretionary surtax on top of the state's 6. The combined rate on ordinary goods is the state rate plus your county's DR-15DSS line, between 6 and 7.5 percent across Florida today.

How exactly does the 5,000 USD cap work?

The county surtax applies only to the first 5,000 USD of a single item of tangible personal property; the state 6 percent applies to the whole price. It is per item, not per receipt, and it does not apply to services, admissions, or lodging charges.

Do online orders to my Florida address get taxed?

As a rule, yes: marketplaces and remote sellers above Florida's thresholds collect the state tax and surtax at checkout. A genuinely untaxed delivery from out of state technically triggers use tax at the same rate.

I am only a visitor. Is any of this refundable to me?

No. Florida sales tax has no tourist refund mechanism. The only border arithmetic that follows you home is CBSA's, on the value above your personal exemption.

Is a car or boat taxed differently?

Same tax, sharper enforcement: the 6 percent plus capped surtax is collected around titling and registration, and cross-border purchases have their own partial-exemption and import rules. Read the vehicle guides before signing anything.

When are the sales tax holidays?

Whenever that year's legislature says: the windows, categories, and caps are re-enacted annually. Check the DOR's current list when a purchase falls in a typical category like school supplies or storm gear, and treat the dates as a bonus, not a plan.