Florida Reemployment Tax: What Miami Employers Actually Owe on Form RT-6
Armando Ramirez5 min read
“No State Income Tax” Does Not Mean No State Payroll Tax
Every business owner who moves to Miami learns the good news within the first week. Florida has no personal income tax, no state withholding on employee paychecks, and no corporate income tax on S corps, partnerships, or sole proprietorships.
Then the first hire happens, and a letter arrives from the Florida Department of Revenue about something called reemployment tax.
Florida reemployment tax is the state unemployment tax. Every other state calls it SUTA. Florida renamed it in 2012, which is exactly why so many new employers do not recognize it as a payroll tax they already know. It is paid entirely by the employer. It never comes out of an employee’s check, and any payroll setup that withholds it from a worker is wrong.
The tax itself is small. The penalty structure around it is not, and that gap is where Miami employers get hurt.
Who Has to File Form RT-6 in Florida
Liability is triggered by hitting either of two thresholds in a calendar year:
- Paying at least $1,500 in total wages during any single calendar quarter, or
- Employing one or more workers for any part of a day in 20 different weeks during the year.
Read that second one carefully. It counts weeks, not hours. A landscaping crew of one part-timer working four hours every Saturday crosses it by mid-May.
Once you are liable, Form RT-6, the Employer’s Quarterly Report, is due four times a year on the last day of the month following each quarter: April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31. When the date lands on a weekend it rolls to the next business day, which matters right now, because October 31, 2026 is a Saturday.
The rule that catches people: a quarter with zero wages still requires a filing. Seasonal businesses that shut down for the summer, or an S corp owner who stopped paying themselves for two quarters, still owe the report. No wages, no tax due, still a return.
What Florida Reemployment Tax Actually Costs
The tax applies only to the first $7,000 of wages per employee per calendar year. For a $70,000 bookkeeper, 90% of the salary is outside the tax entirely.
New employers start at 2.7% and stay there until they have reported for 10 quarters, sometimes 11 depending on when liability began. After that, the Department assigns an experience rate based on how many former employees have drawn benefits against your account. For 2026 those rates run from 0.10% to 5.4%.
Here is the full spread, per employee and for a 25-person payroll:
| Rate | Who pays it | Cost per employee/year | Cost for 25 employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.10% (minimum) | Stable employers, few claims | $7 | $175 |
| 2.70% (new employer) | First 10 quarters | $189 | $4,725 |
| 5.40% (maximum) | Heavy claim history | $378 | $9,450 |
The distance between the top and bottom of that table is over $9,000 a year for the same headcount doing the same work. That difference is earned or lost through turnover history, and it is one of the few payroll costs a small business can actively manage.
The Late Filing Mistake That Costs More Than the Tax
Now the part that turns a $2,000 tax into a $6,000 problem.
Federal unemployment tax runs 6.0% on the same $7,000 wage base. Employers who pay their state reemployment tax on time and in full receive a credit of up to 5.4%, which drops the effective FUTA rate to 0.6%, or about $42 per employee per year. Pay Florida late, and you can lose part or all of that credit, pushing the federal cost toward $420 per employee.
Run that through a 12-person Miami restaurant at the new employer rate:
- Reemployment tax owed: 12 × $189 = $2,268
- FUTA with the credit intact: 12 × $42 = $504
- FUTA with the credit lost: 12 × $420 = $5,040
The federal penalty for being late on the state tax is roughly double the state tax itself. Add Florida’s own late filing charge of $25 for every 30 days or fraction the report is delinquent, plus floating interest on unpaid tax, and a forgotten October deadline compounds through the following year’s federal return.
One more trap: employers with 10 or more employees in any quarter of the prior fiscal year are required to file and pay electronically. Filing on paper anyway carries its own penalty of $25 per report plus $1 per employee, capped at $300. And electronic payments must be initiated by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on the business day before the due date, so the last-minute Friday afternoon payment is already late.
Check Your Rate Notice in December, Not in April
The Department mails Form RT-20, your rate notice for the coming year, each December. If you disagree with the rate, you have 20 days from the “mailed on or before” date printed on the notice to protest in writing. Miss that window and you are locked into the rate for the full year.
Most employers file the notice unread, hand the old rate to their payroll provider, and discover the discrepancy at year end when the numbers do not reconcile. If the rate went up because of a claim you could have contested, the fix had a deadline in January.
Get Your Q3 RT-6 Filed Before November
Florida reemployment tax is not a large line item for most Miami employers. It is a compliance item, and compliance items only become expensive when they are ignored. Third quarter reports are due at the end of October, and the FUTA credit riding on that payment is worth more than the payment itself.
If you are unsure whether you crossed the liability threshold this year, whether your assigned rate is correct, or whether your last few quarterly filings actually went through, book a free consultation with OliRam Advisors. We handle payroll filings for South Florida businesses, including the quarters where nothing happened and the report is due anyway.