Originally published Aug. 27, 2020
This spring, PetMed Express Inc., a nationwide pet pharmacy that sells nearly $300 million a year worth of medicines and supplies, got a six-figure gift from the state of Florida: A $285,000 income tax refund.
Meanwhile, the company that owns Centennial Bank — which has branches in four states and $15 billion in assets — recently revealed that it paid $1 million less in Florida taxes last year.
The tax savings for both companies stem from a roughly $2 billion package of temporary corporate tax cuts that some of the world’s biggest businesses lobbied through the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature in 2018 and 2019 — before the COVID-19 pandemic ripped a multibillion-dollar hole in Florida’s finances.
Those corporate tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of next year. But now, citing the global pandemic, businesses are pushing state leaders to turn those temporary cuts into permanent breaks.
In a new report issued this month, a “COVID-19 Taxpayer Task Force” — which is led in part by lobbyists representing Publix Supermarkets Inc., Walt Disney Co. and Walmart Inc. — called on state leaders to avert what it called a looming “tax increase” for corporations.
“This tax increase would be a blow to companies trying to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the task force wrote in its report.
Opponents accuse corporate giants of exploiting the coronavirus crisis to continue a more than decade-long campaign to do away with Florida’s corporate income tax, which is already among the easiest to avoid in the nation. Only about 1 percent of Florida business pay the tax at all.
They say Florida should focus on strengthening its corporate tax rather than weakening it, especially during a pandemic that they say has exposed a threadbare state safety net. Earlier this year, for instance, more than 37,000 small businesses in Florida were turned away from an emergency loan program because it ran out of money, and many Floridians are still struggling to claim unemployment benefits through a state system that was designed to limit payouts.
Florida’s fiscal outlook continues to worsen. State economists recently estimated that Florida will face a $5.4 billion budget shortfall over the next two years.
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