The latest tax plan: Senate President wants to exempt inexpensive clothing

With just a few weeks left in the 2025 session, the Florida Senate is coming up with its own tax cut alternative for lawmakers to consider as they try to put together a new state budget.

Senate President Ben Albritton and Republicans will offer a proposal to permanently exempt sales taxes on all clothing worth $75 or less. It’s a significant tax break, but it will come with a much smaller price tag than the House plan to permanently cut sales taxes by .75%.

The Senate plan is expected to lower tax collections by roughly $750 million, while the House proposal is estimated to save taxpayers more than $5 billion.

Albritton said part of the inspiration came from looking at Florida’s tax handbook and realizing that certain items, such as food, were already exempt from taxes. He said he looked at cutting taxes on something that could help regular Floridians.

“We view this as an opportunity to help across the board,” Albritton said of exempting sales taxes on certain clothing items.

“These are necessities too, now, right? … We’re not talking about you know, folks that are tourists that may come in and go buy you know a $300 dollar jacket or things like that. We have aligned this, we believe at the $75 to where it can help the most number of Floridians.”

The Senate plans to formally vote on its sales tax cut proposal next week. The House on Wednesday voted unanimously for its sales tax cut bill (HB 7031). Several Democrats during debate said that they supported the proposal because they viewed it as something that would lower a “regressive” tax.

The debate over the size and scope tax cuts will need to be resolved as part of the overall budget negotiations.

The House and Senate each passed out proposed budgets for the coming 2025-26 fiscal year on Wednesday. The Senate passed its budget unanimously, while the House vote was 98-6. But because of the divide over taxes, the two bills have a $4.4 billion gap between them. Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, wants a big cut to property taxes.

The House cuts many more vacant positions versus the Senate budget and the Senate includes a pay raise for state workers. The House also calls for putting in place a strict formulary for state workers’ health insurance. 

The House, saying that it needs to pare back the amount of spending overall in state government, has proposed revamping and clawing back the amount of money spent on several high-profile programs passed in the past few years, including a measure designed to ramp up affordable housing options. Several Democrats decried the decrease in funding for affordable housing and said it remains a problem in Florida.

House Speaker Daniel Perez, while talking to reporters on Wednesday evening, did not respond directly to the Senate’s tax cut alternative but did say that the House proposal was the “largest of its kind” in the country.

“We believe in our budget,” said Perez, but still tried to tamp down any discussion that the House and Senate would not reach a resolution on spending and taxes. The Legislature must have all of its budget work done by April 29 in order to adjourn on time on May 2.

“Somehow, it always ends up getting figured out,” Perez said.

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