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.
- Communication Services Tax
- New specifications are now available below.
- Corporate Income Tax
- The Department has migrated its MeF application format to Florida Form Based Schemas from Category Based Schemas, supporting TY2019 and the two
prior tax years. The Department will support only Form Based format submissions from this point forward. Category Based state submissions will be rejected.
- 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.
- 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. For 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, Solid Waste Surcharge, and/or E911
- Specifications for 2020 are now available below.
- Effective January 1, 2020, the state sales tax rate on the lease or rental of commercial real property decreased 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.
