Bookkeeping, Tax Preparation Support and Virtual CFO Services for Tampa Businesses

Florida's general sales tax rate is 6 percent. Counties add a discretionary surtax, and the Department of Revenue's form DR-15DSS for calendar year 2026 lists Hillsborough at 1.5 percent in total (three separate half-percent pieces, with different expiry dates), Pinellas at 1 percent, Pasco at 1 percent and Hernando at 0.5 percent. The rule to get right is where the surtax attaches. A seller collects it at the rate of the county where the item is delivered, whether or not the seller itself sits in a surtax county.

Two more details change the arithmetic. The surtax applies only to the first $5,000 of the sales amount of a single item of tangible personal property, and the cap does not apply to services, admissions or transient rentals. So a $12,000 piece of equipment delivered to Pinellas carries $50 of surtax, and delivered to Hillsborough, $75. We record the delivery county on every invoice line and the dealer return (form DR-15) is built from those codes. For the registration side of this work, see state registrations.

Until the fall of 2025, Florida charged sales tax on rent for commercial space. The Department of Revenue's Tax Information Publication 25A01-04, issued July 24, 2025, repealed that tax for rental or occupancy periods beginning on or after October 1, 2025, and covers office, retail, warehouse and self-storage rentals. Rent for periods through September 2025 stays taxable even if it is paid later, and a landlord who later collects rent for an earlier period must still report and remit the tax.

For a tenant's ledger, the change shows up as a line that should have disappeared. If a rent invoice for any month from October 2025 on still carries a sales tax charge, that charge should not be there, and it is worth raising with the landlord. For a landlord whose sales tax account existed only for commercial rent, returns continue through the final periods (July through September 2025 for a monthly filer), after which the Department updates the account. Mixed accounts keep filing for other taxable sales. Parking, boat docking and short-term accommodation rentals were not part of the repeal, which matters for marina operators and for anyone renting storage space for vehicles.

Florida's local business taxes work through a receipt that expires every September 30. Under section 205.053 of the Florida Statutes, receipts go on sale from July 1, are due on or before September 30 and expire on September 30 of the following year. A receipt that is not renewed on time is delinquent: a 10 percent penalty for October, then 5 percent more for each later month, capped at 25 percent of the business tax. Operating without a required receipt costs a 25 percent penalty on the tax due.

The City of Tampa runs its own online renewal service for the city's business tax, and a business with sites in different cities or in unincorporated parts of Hillsborough, Pinellas or Pasco can carry a separate receipt for each taxing place. That is a bookkeeping point as much as a legal one. We keep a register of every receipt, its location, its renewal cost and its expiry, and book the cost as a licenses and permits expense by location so a multi-site owner can see what each address costs to keep open. A renewal made in October or later pays the penalty described above.

Florida charges corporate income tax at 5.5 percent for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2022, on the return form F-1120. The Department of Revenue lists only S corporations that pay federal income tax on line 23c of Form 1120-S as subject to the tax, so a pass-through owner should confirm the filing position with the preparer. Florida has no personal income tax, so for most Tampa pass-through owners the planning happens at the federal level.

The state's other yearly task belongs to Sunbiz, the Division of Corporations. The annual report fee is $150 for a profit corporation, $138.75 for an LLC and $61.25 for a nonprofit corporation. Profit corporations, LLCs and limited partnerships that file after May 1 pay a $400 late fee, and a limited partnership or LLLP pays $500 for the report itself. An entity that has not filed by the third Friday in September is administratively dissolved or revoked at the close of business on the fourth Friday. That risk is why the filing date sits on the same calendar as your monthly close, and why our state annual reports work tracks it by entity.

Medical and dental groups across Hillsborough and Pinellas need patient receivables kept apart from insurer remittances, and physician practices that bill from several locations need class tracking by site. Contractors and builders carry job costing, retainage and subcontractor 1099 volume; see class and location tracking for how we split a ledger that way.

The port and the marinas generate their own questions. Marine dealers and charter operators deal with dock and storage charges that stayed taxable after the rent repeal, so those lines need their own sales tax code apart from ordinary rent. Restaurants and short-term rental hosts on the Gulf beaches see seasonal swings that call for monthly cash planning, not only a year-end reconciliation. Professional services firms and financial back offices need partner-level reporting that does not depend on one person's spreadsheet.

BLS May 2025 estimates for the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro show a mean annual wage of $88,300 for accountants and auditors, below the national mean of $94,750, with a median of $78,990 and 14,770 jobs counted in the metro. For bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks the metro mean is $53,270, just under the national $53,560. Financial managers average $171,330 here against $186,910 nationally.

Tampa Bay pays below the national mean for accountants and financial managers and is level on clerks, so the wage gap to a plan is narrower here than in a high-wage metro. It is still wide. Essentials is $249 a month for businesses up to $50,000 in monthly expenses, which is $2,988 over a year against a clerk mean of $53,270 before benefits, and Growth is $549 a month up to $150,000, per the pricing page. The comparison that matters is coverage. A salary buys one person, with vacation and turnover; a plan buys the monthly close done on a set of procedures.

The engagement is remote from the first call, and the accounting file stays in your name in QuickBooks Online or Xero. Statements and tax documents go through a client portal rather than email. For tax work we prepare the books and supporting schedules, and the return is prepared for review and signature by the credentialed preparer. If you are already using a Florida accountant for the return, we send that person the schedules instead of replacing them.

Book a call on the contact page. Bring your list of delivery counties, your current business tax receipts and the date of your last annual report. We scope any catch-up work separately from the monthly ledger, then write the terms into an engagement letter. Across the state line, Atlanta deals with a city-level business tax of its own, and every metro is on the locations hub.