BRADENTON — A local state senator Tuesday said she’ll continue to push for the state to collect taxes on Internet sales to bolster education funding.
Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, said since New York recently led the way in the process, she’s been researching the possibility of Florida joining in. It was one of several topics discussed during a legislative luncheon hosted by Manatee County school district Superintendent Tim McGonegal.
The superintendent and the school board sat down with Detert, Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, and Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, at Mattison’s Riverside to discuss legislative issues related to education.
The Internet sales tax discussion came the same day as government leaders in Tallahassee discussed the long-running money-battle dispute between Florida counties and online hotel booking companies, with no resolution in sight. The Manatee County Commission recently decided to sue some of the companies, including Priceline and Travelocity, in an effort to recoup back taxes.
Detert said it’s unfair that Internet sales aren’t taxed because Florida businesses must charge 7 percent for the same item bought online.
“When I asked how much might be collected (from Internet sales tax revenue), I was told it could be $2 billion or more,” she said.
Cash-strapped districts like Manatee would gladly accept the extra money. The district budget is tight and about $25 million has to be trimmed during the next three years. Cuts to this fiscal year’s $708.6 million budget totaled $14.2 million.
In addition to a potential Internet sales tax collection, the group discussed developing an adequate statewide funding system for the district’s workforce programs, mainly at Manatee Technical Institute.
Galvano said his main focus on behalf of the Manatee school district is to address Florida’s funding formula for workforce education programs offered in technical and adult education centers across the district.
The state gives $380 million in funding to various technical institutes. But with the current allocation process, districts receive a similar funding regardless of declines in enrollment.
Continuing to fund districts that are under-performing is bad public policy, said Doug Wagner, district director of adult and career technical education. “MTI has increased in enrollment, but our money is frozen,” Wagner said. “We need to make it so that all the districts receive the same percentage.”
Detert also touched on the possibility of making the FCAT an online test to save money.
At the Cabinet meeting in Tallahassee, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink expressed an urgency to resolve the hotel-booking issue. For nearly a decade, online bookers such as Orbitz and Expedia have successfully mined the Florida tourism market, buying blocks of hotel rooms and marking up the cost to consumers. But the booking firms pay sales and local tourism taxes on the wholesale price of the room, not the full price charged to consumers.
More than a dozen cities and counties have filed or are considering lawsuits, claiming the online booking industry refuses to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes owed annually.
But online companies say they should not be required to pay tax on the full price of the room because they are providing a service that helps attract millions of taxpaying tourists to the state every year.
The Department of Revenue, the enforcer of the tax laws, has refused to say which side is right and has waited for clear direction from the Legislature, which has refused to act.
“For a number of years, we have sort of stood on the sidelines,” said the agency’s executive director Lisa Echeverri.
Gov. Charlie Crist spoke last and characterized the effort to collect money from the online rentals as an additional tax on visitors.
“It would concern me if this panel moves in a direction of trying to add an additional burden or tax on those who want to travel to the Sunshine State,” Crist said.
— The Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau contributed to this report.
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