Ryan Ray
Hobe Sound Republican state Rep. Mary Lynn Magar is teaming up with state Sen. Dorothy Hukill from Port Orange to push a sales tax exemption on industrial equipment in an effort to stimulate employment in Florida’s manufacturing sector.
“Florida’s economy continues to improve and making this sales tax exemption permanent will provide companies with greater economic security, allowing them to reinvest in their businesses and employees,” said Hukill in a statement on Tuesday.
The legislation would make permanent a temporary tax exemption passed at the behest of Gov. Rick Scott that allows manufacturers — who employ around 300,000 Floridians, many with better salaries than their peers in the workforce — to pay no sales tax on certain classes of heavy machinery and other means of production.
The bill envisions privately owned manufacturing equipment as a form of infrastructure. At a time when companies like Boeing and Toyota are relocating from the union-riddled North down to Southern states like Georgia and South Carolina, the theory is that bills like these will keep Florida in contention to capture some of those firms’ headquarters.
The Magar and Hukill bills — HB 613 and SB 544, respectively — were reviewed by the Office of Economic & Demographic Research’s Economic Estimating Conference last week and will have to navigate three committees of reference before reaching a full vote on the House and Senate floors.
