Sellers located in Florida and collecting Florida sales tax.

nita_rae

Brick Owl is not managing sales tax, so those sellers located in Florida are supposed to collect sales tax on packages shipped to Florida destinations. There is a way to effect an exemption, but that is based on the buyer having a Florida exemption certificate, and not on a specific address.

The Florida legislature has thrown a spanner into that way of doing things. Last fall, they passed a new state statute establishing an official registry for freight forwarders, who are located in, and doing business in Florida. The specific registered business address of the freight forwarder is now exempt from Florida sales and use tax. There is supposed to be a list available for download at the Florida DoR, but I could not find it. I've reached out to the Florida DoR and asked about this.

Once I get the list, since there is no way to exempt specific addresses, I guess I will have to do a partial refund on those orders (should I receive any) for the amount of sales tax collected. This is not something that can be based on zip code, as it is address specific.

Calibrick

Isn't a freight forwarder one of those companies that collect materials for distribution to outside of the US? Just asking, not too familiar with that term... it may be that you have to place a notice on your store (sounds like you're in FL) to the effect of "if you are a freight forwarder, please forward us your evidence of same so you can be made exempt from sales tax."

You can exempt specific BO IDs from sales tax I believe.

nita_rae

@Calibrick Yes, they are freight consolidators and forwarders. It's how you can get your package(s) sent internationally without USPS doing the cartage.

The new Florida statute is saying that specific addresses in Florida, as registered with DoR, are now tax exempt. I cannot designate specific customers, because it would be any customer shipping to those addresses. This is where is gets weird, the buyer has to do nothing, it's the address that triggers the exemption.

I am aware, based on a private conversation with another seller over at BL, that the system over there is already recognizing some of these addresses. That seller wondered why an order to Florida had a tax rate of 0%. When he did a reverse lookup on the address, it was a freight forwarder to Latin America.

nita_rae

The State of Florida, Depart of Revenue, has now made available a downloaded list of those registered freight forwarding agents, It is on this page, tucked within the last drop down.

https://floridarevenue.com/taxes/taxesfees/pages/sales_tax.aspx

I see 3 unique shippers, with 14 registrations. Florida sellers should collect zero sales tax for any shipments going to those registered agents.

Calibrick

Nita, you may want to consider sharing this with the BO admin? Just a thought!

nita_rae

One way of solving this, from a BO perspective, would be where we specify a statewide tax rate (like we do now) but then do overrides (via a Zip+4 9 digit number) with a zero tax rate. The 14 registrations could be covered by 3 specific Zip+4 values. The odds of getting someone else using one of those Zip codes is so small, that I'm not going to worry about it.