How does Florida state income tax and reemployment tax work in 2026?

What this means operationally:

• No state withholding on payroll. Federal income tax withholding runs as usual on the federal W-4; nothing state-side gets deducted.
• No state W-4. Florida does not publish a state withholding exemption certificate.
• No state quarterly return. The cadence that exists in 41 other US states does not apply. The only Florida-specific employer return is Form RT-6, covered below.
• No state annual reconciliation. Federal Form W-2 still reports federal tax in Box 2; Box 17 (state income tax withheld) stays blank for Florida wages.

Why this lands as a recruitment lever

A $100,000 base in Florida nets out several thousand dollars ahead of the same number in California (about 9.3 percent state tax at that bracket) or New York City (state plus city around 10 percent combined). When you recruit an out-of-state worker into a Florida role, the headline stays the same, the take-home story improves. Surface it in the offer conversation. The number is real.

How experience-rating works

Florida uses a reserve-ratio method. The Department of Revenue looks at up to 12 quarters of benefits charged against your account and up to 12 quarters of payroll, then assigns a rate band. Stable, low-turnover employers settle at the 0.10 percent floor. The annual rate notice is mailed each December and applies to wages paid the following calendar year.

The 0.10 percent minimum is genuinely common

Around 65 percent of Florida employers pay the 0.10 percent floor in 2026. That is the eleventh consecutive year at the lowest step. For a 10-employee Florida operation, total annual Reemployment Tax across the whole company comes in at $70. The Reemployment Assistance Trust Fund stayed solvent through the post-pandemic recovery, which is why the floor has held.

FUTA credit interaction

Federal Unemployment Tax is 6.0 percent on the first $7,000. Pay your Florida Reemployment Tax in full and on time and you get a 5.4 percent FUTA credit, leaving effective FUTA at 0.6 percent ($42 per employee per year). Late or partial state payment erodes the credit. Book both lines together on every cycle, or you lose the credit downstream.

This matters most for multi-state employers, because the rule varies by state:

• Most states follow Florida’s pattern: employer-only contribution to the state UI trust fund.
• Alaska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the three exceptions in 2026. Employees in those states pay a small percentage of UI alongside the employer.
• Florida sits at the easy end of the spectrum: zero employee deduction, employer-only, low wage base.

The multi-state configuration trap

Onboard a Florida hire onto a US-wide payroll system and check the employee UI deduction line is suppressed for Florida wages before the first cycle runs. The watch-out is a Florida record accidentally inheriting an Alaska or New Jersey rule from a default template. A wrong deduction on the first payslip is the kind of mistake an employee notices on day one.

No state disability, no state paid family leave

Florida has no state disability insurance and no state-mandated paid family leave. SDI exists in five states (California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island) plus Puerto Rico. State paid family leave exists in nine jurisdictions (California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, DC). Florida is in neither group, so there is no third payslip line at the state level for these programmes.

Local preemption on paid sick leave

Florida preempts cities and counties from creating their own paid sick leave ordinances. Some Florida cities tried in the early 2010s. The state preemption blocks them. A Florida employer does not need to track a patchwork of city-level sick leave rules.

What goes on the form

RT-6 captures three things per employee per quarter: gross wages paid, excess wages (anything above the $7,000 base year-to-date), and the resulting taxable wages. The total contribution is calculated at your assigned rate and paid alongside the filing. Form RT-6A is the continuation sheet for employers with more rows than fit on a single page.

Online filing through the DOR portal

Once you are registered (Form DR-1, covered next), the assigned Florida Reemployment Tax account number plus a portal login is enough to file RT-6 online and pay by ACH debit, ACH credit, or card. Electronic payments must be initiated with a confirmation number by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the business day before the deadline.

Quarterly instalment option (Q1 to Q3 only)

Florida lets employers spread the first-three-quarter liability across instalments for a $5 annual fee. Q1 tax can be split into four equal payments; Q2 into three; Q3 into two. Q4 is paid in a single lump. Useful for cash-flow smoothing on larger headcounts. Teamed’s payroll defaults to single-payment for clean reconciliation unless a client asks for the instalment plan.

Zero-wage quarters

If a Florida employer has no Florida wages in a quarter (the only Florida employee was on unpaid leave all quarter, say), file a zero RT-6 anyway. A missing return triggers a delinquency notice and starts the penalty clock.

Three things to have ready before you start DR-1:

1. Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN). Florida’s system cross-references the IRS record.
2. First date of Florida wages. Used to back-date the Reemployment Tax account so the first quarter is captured correctly.
3. Business structure and contact details. Legal entity name, mailing address, payroll contact, and bank details for ACH payment of contributions.

The standard sequence for a US employer hiring its first Florida worker:

• Step 1. Form DR-1 submitted online at floridarevenue.com (paper accepted but slower).
• Step 2. Florida assigns an RT account number, typically within two to three weeks.
• Step 3. Employer signs up on the Florida DOR portal for the Reemployment Tax module, links the RT number.
• Step 4. First RT-6 filed at the next quarter end, paying the employer Reemployment Tax for the period.
• Step 5. Annual rate notice issued by the Florida DOR each December for the following calendar year. For the first 10 quarters before experience-rating, the rate is the new-employer 2.7 percent.

New-hire reporting (Form CS-EF315)

Separately from RT registration, every Florida employer must report each new hire (and each contractor paid $600 or more) within 20 days of the start date. The form is CS-EF315, filed with the Florida Department of Revenue Child Support Program. Florida extended the rule to independent contractors in October 2021. Teamed’s onboarding workflow files CS-EF315 automatically on the first day of employment.

The Teamed shortcut

Teamed’s US entity (Teamed US Inc., Delaware) is already registered with the Florida Department of Revenue as a Florida employer. A Florida hire through Teamed skips the DR-1 step. The employee onboards onto Teamed’s existing Florida RT account; payroll runs from day one. The whole registration sequence above collapses into a Day 1 employee onboarding flow.

What a Florida hire through Teamed looks like, day to day:

• Day 0: Teamed’s US entity is already registered as a Florida employer with an active Reemployment Tax account. No DR-1 filing for the new hire. Federal employer registration is in place too.
• Day 1: employee onboarded with federal Form W-4, Form I-9, direct deposit, and benefits. No state W-4. CS-EF315 new-hire report filed with the Florida DOR within 20 days.
• Ongoing: payroll cycle calculates federal income tax, employer and employee FICA, FUTA, and Florida employer Reemployment Tax at the assigned rate. No state income tax line. No state UI employee line. No SDI line. No state PFL line.
• Quarterly: Form RT-6 filed electronically through the Florida DOR portal by the last day of the month after quarter end. Reemployment Tax paid by ACH.
• Year end: Federal Form W-2 issued. Box 17 stays blank. Federal Form 940 (FUTA) filed by 31 January, claiming the full 5.4 percent state-paid credit.
• Annually: Florida rate notice received each December, applied to the following calendar year. Teamed’s US payroll specialist reviews the experience-rated outcome and books the rate change in the invoice lines.

Behind the platform sits a named country specialist for the United States and an in-house payroll specialist who knows the Florida Reemployment Tax rate-class mechanics and the RT-6 cadence by heart. When something looks off on a payslip, you message the same person. No rota of generic tickets. No chatbot triage.

Contractor onboarding, EOR payroll, and entity graduation all live on one platform. A US contractor who converts to W-2 employment in Florida keeps their record. That same employee can later graduate from EOR to your own Delaware C-corp without changing systems. One timeline. One platform.

Pricing is one number per employee per month, in any currency you pay us in. No FX mark-up between your billing currency and the US dollars Teamed remits to the State of Florida. The Florida payslip ends up with the cleanest gross-to-net of any US state: federal income tax plus FICA, and that is it.

When EOR is the right call (and when it isn’t)

EOR works while you’re testing the Florida market, ramping a small remote team, or running one or two Florida hires alongside a larger US payroll elsewhere.

Once you have six or more Florida employees and predictable hiring ahead, the maths of running your own US entity starts to win. Florida is one of the easier states to register in once you already have a US entity. Teamed’s Crossover Calculator tells you the month the EOR model stops being right. The conversation is built into the relationship.