Software Developer Information and Specifications
Specifications are provided for developers of software for electronically filing tax returns. This information is for:
- Commercial software vendors to create software for approval by the Department.
- Companies to develop in-house software applications for direct electronic filing of their tax returns.
What's New
- The Department is migrating its tax specifications to the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA) State Exchange System, beginning
with the corporate income tax specifications.
- Corporate Income Tax
- The Department is migrating its MeF application format from the current Category Based Schemas to Form Based Schemas. Software developers
wishing to convert to the Florida Form Based MeF format should apply using the Software Development
Application (Form DR-600001
) to develop and test their product output
for approval. Assurance Testing System (ATS) development and testing are currently in process.
- On December 20, 2019, at 5:00 p.m. ET, the current Florida Category Based MeF application will be decommissioned. Category Based state
submissions will not be available for retrieval from that point forward.
- In January 2020, the Department will implement the Florida Form Based MeF application, supporting TY2019 and the two prior tax years. This
implementation will coincide with the IRS date for TY2019 MeF annual development cutover period. The Department will support only Form Based
format submissions from that point forward.
- The Florida corporate income/franchise tax rate is reduced from 5.5% to 4.458% for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2019, but
before January 1, 2022. For more information, visit the Department’s
Tax and Interest Rates webpage.
- Motor Fuel Tax
- The migration for terminal suppliers and terminal operators converting from the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) file format to the
Extensible Markup Language (XML) file format, is ongoing and should be completed no later than December 31, 2019. For XML filing specifications, see
the Motor Fuel Tax section below. Effective March 1, 2020, the Department will no longer accept returns submitted in the EDI format.
- Sales and Use Tax, Soled Waste Surchare, and/or E911
- Specifications for 2019 are now available below.
- Effective January 1, 2020, the state sales tax rate on the lease or rental of commercial real property will decrease from 5.7% to 5.5%.
(Local option discretionary sales surtax continues to apply.)
All software developers must complete a Software Development Application
(Form DR-600001
).
For information about developing filing software, contact the Business Technology Office at
e-vendor@floridarevenue.com. If you are an authorized vendor, please include your software ID.
