Jerry Donnini of Sales TaxHelper interview on NEREJ NYREJ Podcast

Well, now that sounds easy compared to what we're going to talk about now.

And that's the real estate taxes.

What it should be charged, when it should be charged.

Like someone owns a multifamily property.

They're renting the property.

You're not paying a sales tax on the rental.

Correct.

Generally not, yeah.

So like a lot of states, at least at the commercial level, Florida actually was one of the few states that just did away with like its tax on commercial rent.

There's some onesies and twosies out there, but by and large, commercial rent usually isn't taxable.

More of what I see is, you know, not really what we're talking about today, but more on like the residential side where there's like the short-term rental taxes, like the bed taxes and the tourist taxes and all of that stuff.

But on the commercial side, yeah, that's...

You know, most states don't like taxing like they're in-state businesses.

And so that's the reason that a lot of times commercial rental tax isn't taxable and probably part of the reason Florida recently did away with it.

Yeah.

Now, what about with when you rent, when you have an office building and you lease it to a company, there's no tax on that.

Usually not.

Yeah.

Like I said, aside from there might be one or two local taxes out there, but by and large, like Florida was the big state that had it.

And that That got put to bed, I think it was the end of 2025, if I'm not mistaken.

So it's been not taxable for about a year now.

And they kept reducing the rate and reducing the rate.

And they finally decided just to do away with the tax altogether.

The big problem there was like a lawyer like myself or a doctor would own the building in their personal name or in a separate business and then rent it to their practice.

And under Florida law, that was getting captured in the tax, whether you charge tax directly or Or if the operating business paid things like the mortgage, the property taxes, and the insurance, that would all get lumped in there.