Scott wants to exempt more businesses from corporate tax

Gov. Rick Scott will use the 2013 legislative session to continue his back-door strategy of eliminating the state's corporate income tax.

The Legislature had no appetite for his first idea: cutting the corporate income tax rate from 5.5 percent to 3 percent. So Scott instead settled on an approach that seeks to exempt more business income from being subject to the tax.

In 2011, he successfully lobbied for the exemption of the first $5,000 worth of taxable income to $25,000. In 2012, the Legislature passed an exemption of $25,000 to $50,000.

You can guess what's coming next: Scott wants to widen the exemption from $50,000 to $75,000 during the 2013 legislative session, which starts in March.

"Today, I am proud to announce that in the upcoming legislative session, we will work to further eliminate the business tax for another 2,000 small businesses," Scott told the Florida Association of Realtors in November. "Everything we do must be tied to helping families get jobs, and eliminating this tax will ensure more small businesses can hire people."

The corporate income tax comprises about 8 percent -- or $2 billion -- of the state's general revenue, according to the Department of Revenue.

Scott told the real estate agents group that the cut, which would benefit about 2,000 businesses, would cost about $8 million annually, according to the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald. Scott's press team said the new exemption would mean 80 percent of Florida businesses would be exempt from paying the tax.

Scott wanted to give small businesses another tax break, but Florida voters declined to give it to them. Voters rejected Amendment 10, which would have given small businesses with less than $50,000 worth of furniture and other equipment an additional $25,000 tax exemption. The cut would have had resulted in about $20 million in savings for small businesses.

Florida Democratic Party executive director Scott Arceneaux scoffed at Scott's new request to make more businesses exempt from paying the corporate income tax, saying Scott wants to give "handouts to the corporate special interests who epitomize the broken politics of Tallahassee.”

We will monitor Scott's promise to eliminate the corporate income tax during the 2013 legislative session and beyond. For now it remains In The Works.