Florida Sales Taxes on Internet Sales Outside of Florida [Florida]

Question: A Florida corporation, with a physical location and principal address in Florida, sells flowers, gift baskets, and other items of tangible personal property over the Internet. The company does not maintain any inventory and instead uses the inventory of florists in the delivery location to deliver purchased products. Are deliveries outside of Florida subject to Florida sales tax?

Answer: Reversing the lower appeals court, the Florida Supreme Court says yes.

The florist mounted two challenges. First was a Due Process argument. The Due Process Clause requires some type…

Florida Department of Revenue v. American Business USA Corp., 41 Fla.L.Weekly S237a (Florida Supreme Court, May 26, 2016)

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15 May 2023

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On May 12, 2023, Jenna Rubin presented at the 35th Annual Real Property Trust and Estate Law Section of the American Bar Association’s National CLE Conference in Washington DC. She took part in a panel discussion on “Black Tie Optional: The Eroding Formalities to Creating a Valid Will.”

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14 Dec 2021

FBAR Case Reversed – Nonwillful Filing Penalties Based on Number of Accounts Not Reported

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22 Nov 2021

Of Spousal Gifts and the Substance Over Form Doctrine

U.S. spouses each have a unified credit that allows for substantial gifting to third parties without requiring the payment of gift tax. What happens if one spouse has assets to be gifted away, but that spouse does not have sufficient remaining unified credit exemption to cover the gift and wants to use the exemption of the other spouse?

At times, the spouses can agree to split the gift for gift tax purposes, which treats 1/2 the gift as coming from each spouse. This allows the unified credit of the spouse not making the gift to be used to avoid gift tax on the 1/2 that such spouse is treated as making. However, it can be an imperfect solution if the spouse with the assets does not have enough unified credit to offset his or her 1/2 of the gift.

Oftentimes, the parties may contemplate having the party with the assets transfer them by gift to the other spouse (a tax-free gift under the gift tax marital deduction), and then the receiving spouse makes a gift to the third party applying his or her own unified credit. The question in these circumstances is whether the IRS will respect the transaction and allow the receiving spouse’s unified credit to be applied to the gift to the third party, or whether it would seek to apply the “substance over form” doctrine to treat the gift as coming from the spouse who transferred the assets to the other spouse and does not have enough unified credit to fully cover the gift.

This is not a black and white issue. On one end of the spectrum. . .

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