The FL Legislature voted to raise taxes on consumers – so they could cut taxes on businesses – by more than $1 billion/year.

Now my colleagues may pass $300M more in tax breaks – but just for the state's very biggest corporations. Companies like Disney, HCA & Anheuser-Busch. 1/

This is an ENORMOUS corporate giveaway.

Big-business lobbyists want you to think it’s too complicated for you to understand -- but it’s not!

Here’s how it would work: 2/

First, let's talk about HOW Florida’s corporate income tax works.

It all starts with a company’s total U.S. profit – the amount of income it reports to the IRS on its federal tax return. 3/

Florida then taxes a portion of that company’s U.S. income – only the portion of its profits that it actually earned within Florida. 4/

Think of a corporation’s profit like a [vegan] cake.

The corporation pays federal tax on the whole cake. But it only pays Florida tax on a slice of that cake. 5/

This means that whenever Congress passes a law that changes federal corporate taxes – anything that makes the cake bigger or smaller – it affects Florida corporate taxes, too. 6/

Because of this link, Florida must pass an obscure bill every session that essentially adopts any recent changes to federal taxes.

This is known as the “piggyback” bill -- because Florida is “piggybacking” its tax code to the latest version of the federal tax code. 7/

Usually, the piggyback bill is just a harmless formality that doesn’t really change anything.

Not this year, though. 8/

That’s because, in 2020, former President Trump and Congress passed a BUNCH of big corporate tax breaks.

There were huge tax breaks for corporations in the CARES Act, and even more in the COVID relief bill they passed in December. 9/

One of the worst ones is known as the “three-martini lunch tax break.” Trump & the tourism industry lobbied for it.

It lets corporations write off their expenses when their executives have “business” meals at places like high-end steak houses or inside fancy resort hotels. 10/

Because of these new federal tax breaks, corporations are going to be able to report much less profit to the IRS!

So that cake is going to be much smaller.

Which means that Florida’s slice could be much smaller, too. 11/

This is a BIG deal!

If we pass a usual piggyback bill & pick up these new tax breaks, then corporations will end up paying $250 million less in *Florida* corporate taxes next year. 12/

FL would be giving them an extra quarter-billion-dollar in state tax breaks *on top of the federal tax breaks they already got* 13/

Guess what? We don’t have to do this!

In our piggyback bill, we could “decouple” from these federal corporate giveaways (which BTW have in many cases gone to big businesses that actually profited off the pandemic). 14/

Just decoupling from the three-martini lunch tax break would save us $60 million! 15/

Back in 2017, Trump and Congress actually reduced a big corporate tax break that benefitted corporations that load up on lots of debt. (Trump and Congress reduced that tax break in order to help offset the MASSIVE cut they made to the federal tax rate.) 16/

Reducing that tax break forced corporations to report more profit on their federal tax returns.

It actually made the cake bigger! 17/

After that happened, corporate lobbyists came to Tallahassee & got Republicans to cut state taxes to compensate. So the FL Legislature gave big corporations $543 million in tax refunds and cut the state tax rate from 5.5% to 4.458% for three years. 18/ https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2020/03/30/floridas-corporations-set-pocket-543-2-million-tax-refund/5090536002/

Now they want FL to “decouple” from that 2017 change & go back to claiming a bigger tax break on their corporate debt – like Congress used to let them before it changed federal law.

This would be a $50 million a year tax break for corporations. And it would be permanent! 19/

Both of these tax breaks (picking up the new federal breaks Congress passed last year and restoring the 2017 tax break that that Congress reduced) are in this year’s piggyback bill, which was just filed in the Florida Senate (SB 7082). 20/

https://flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7082

That’s $300 million in corporate tax breaks next year alone.

And remember: Only 1 percent of businesses in Florida pay any corporate income tax at all.

So this $300 million would go *only* to the biggest of big corporations. 21/

We cannot afford to KEEP giving money away to corporations.

We’ve already given businesses $1 billion in tax breaks this session alone!

They don’t need another $300 million. The people of Florida do. 22/