Methodology
Where the rates come from, how they are verified, and what we do when sources disagree.
Last updated . Rates on this site come from Florida Department of Revenue, Form DR-15DSS, Discretionary Sales Surtax Information.
The source of record
Every rate on this site traces to Form DR-15DSS, Discretionary Sales Surtax Information, published annually by the Florida Department of Revenue. The DOR issues a new edition each November for the calendar year ahead, and rate changes take effect on 1 January.
Where a county’s rate changed mid-cycle, the Department issues a Tax Information Publication (TIP) for that county. Those are cited on the county page they affect.
How each rate is verified
A rate is only published here once it has been confirmed in at least two places, and every county record carries:
| Field | What it records |
|---|---|
source |
The document the rate came from |
source_url |
A direct link to it |
effective_date |
When the rate took effect |
last_verified |
The date a human last checked it |
verification_status |
Plain-language note on how firmly it is confirmed |
The last_verified date appears on every county page. If it is more than a few months old, treat the rate as needing a check against the DOR before you rely on it.
What we do when sources disagree
Secondary summaries of Florida surtax rates disagree with each other more often than you would expect, usually because a county changed rate and one publisher has not refreshed. Two rules:
- The DOR document wins. Always. A law firm summary, a software vendor’s guide and this site are all downstream of the DR-15DSS.
- A disagreement is published, not hidden. Where sources conflict and the primary document has not been confirmed, the county page says so rather than picking a number and looking confident.
Known limitation, stated plainly
At the time of writing, the rates on this site are cross-verified against two independent published transcriptions of the DR-15DSS for calendar year 2026, which agree on all 67 counties, together with the Department’s own TIP for the Palm Beach change. Direct confirmation against the DOR’s own CY2026 PDF is outstanding because the form library was still serving the CY2025 edition at the URL for the current form.
The expiration dates shown are those printed on the CY2025 DR-15DSS and are labelled as prior-year reference. They are useful for seeing which surtaxes are near sunset, and they are not a substitute for the current form.
This is the sort of thing most rate pages leave out. It is here because a rate table you cannot audit is not worth much.
Corrections
If a rate here is wrong, we would rather know. Email the correction with a link to the DOR document that shows it, and the page will be updated with a note in the change log.