Florida: Corporate Income Tax Rate Decreased for 2021

On September 14, 2021, the Florida Department of Revenue announced in Tax Information Publication No: 21C01-02 that the state’s corporate income tax rate has been reduced to 3.535 percent for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2021, but before January 1, 2022. Recall, the 2018 legislation conforming Florida to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act required a downward adjustment of the corporate income tax rate if actual net collections for fiscal years ending June 30 of 2019, 2020, and 2021 exceeded “adjusted forecasted collections” for that year. The legislation also provided for corporate income refunds to taxpayers if collections met certain criteria. Florida’s Revenue Estimating Conference recently announced that the trigger to issue corporate tax refunds in the spring of 2022 has been met.

The Department reminds taxpayers that the corporate income tax rate returns to 5.5 percent in 2022. As such, when calculating estimated tax payments for 2022, taxpayers that are relying on the safe harbor of paying  100 percent of the prior year’s taxes will need to base their payments on the tax that would have been due on the prior year’s income using a 5.5 percent tax rate. Please stay tuned to TWIST for future rate changes.