Florida Commercial Rent Sales Tax Repeal: What Miami Tenants and Landlords Should Check

For more than half a century, Florida was the only state that taxed business rent. That ended a year ago. The Florida commercial rent sales tax repeal is old news by now, but the cleanup isn’t. Billing systems, lease clauses, and old returns are where mistakes tend to hide, and Miami’s dense mix of office, retail, and warehouse space makes it easy for one to slip through.

What the Repeal Actually Did

Governor DeSantis signed House Bill 7031 on June 30, 2025, repealing Section 212.031 of the Florida Statutes, the state sales tax on commercial real property leases, effective October 1, 2025. No state sales tax or discretionary sales surtax applies to rent for rental or occupancy periods beginning on or after that date. In Miami-Dade, that meant the 2% state tax plus the county’s 1% surtax disappeared from the rent line entirely.

The phrase that matters is “occupancy periods.” The tax follows the period the rent covers, not the date the money moves. Rent for a period through September 2025 stays taxable even if it was paid in October or later.

The Math Behind the Savings

Here is what the repeal removes at Miami-Dade’s combined 3% rate:

A $30,000 tenant is keeping roughly the cost of a quality commercial espresso machine every single month. Those savings only exist if the landlord has actually stopped charging the tax.

Tenant Checklist: Verify, Then Verify Again

Audit your recent invoices. Pull every rent statement from October 2025 forward. Any line labeled sales tax, surtax, or “tax on rent” is a red flag. Autopay setups are the usual culprit, since they keep the old total long after the law changed.

Check your CAM and additional rent. The repeal covers more than base rent — it eliminates the tax on base rent, operating expenses, and other charges payable to landlords under commercial leases. Annual reconciliations are where leftover tax can reappear, so review your reconciliation of additional rent to confirm no sales tax was applied to charges incurred on or after October 1, 2025.

Look for prepaid rent. If you paid in advance during the summer of 2025 for months after the cutoff, tax was collected that should not have been. A landlord in that position is expected to refund the tenant and then seek reimbursement from the Department of Revenue using Form DR-26S. If that never happened, ask for it in writing.

Review the lease itself. Most Florida form leases contain language requiring the tenant to pay sales tax on rent. That clause is now dead weight, but leftover tax language can cause confusion at renewal, so clean it up the next time you negotiate.

Landlord Checklist: Close the Loop

Finish the old filings. If a sales tax account existed only to report commercial rent, you still file returns for reporting periods through September 2025, and the Department updates the account after the final return. Don’t close the account yourself.

Remember the late payments. If a tenant pays rent for a pre-October period late, you still owe tax on it. Tag receipts by the period they cover, not the deposit date, so your bookkeeping doesn’t quietly misstate what’s owed.

Mind the audit window. The Department of Revenue has a three-year period to assess deficiencies on filed returns. The tax is gone going forward, but errors from 2023 through September 2025 are still fair game — which matters most if you’re selling a building, since a buyer’s attorney will ask about it.

Update your software and templates. Accounting platforms, property management systems, and invoice templates may still carry a tax code for rent. Turn it off, and rewrite lease templates so new tenants never see the old language.

Watch what’s still taxable. The repeal targets commercial real property rent specifically. Other rentals, like short-term lodging, follow different rules entirely. If a property has parking, storage, or mixed-use components, confirm how each stream is treated rather than assuming everything dropped out.

Why Miami Is Especially Exposed

Miami has an unusual amount of triple-net retail, related-party leases between owners and their operating companies, and tenants who pay through property managers rather than directly. Each layer is a place where a tax charge can survive unnoticed. If a related-party lease was structured to minimize Florida sales tax, it may now be worth simplifying — talk to your CPA about whether the structure still makes sense. (For how the rest of Miami-Dade’s sales tax layers work on the goods and hospitality side, see our breakdown of Miami vs. Miami Beach sales tax rules.)

Your Next Step

Block off an hour this week. Pull twelve months of rent invoices if you’re a tenant, or twelve months of tenant billings if you’re a landlord, and look for any tax line. Most businesses will find nothing. The ones that do find something often find it repeated every month. If you want a second set of eyes on a lease, a CAM reconciliation, or a refund request, OliRam Advisors in Miami can walk through it with you and make sure the Florida commercial rent sales tax repeal is actually working in your favor.

This post is general information, not tax or legal advice. Confirm your specific situation with a qualified professional.