President Donald Trump signs a government funding bill in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 3, 2026. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
A number of states have opted not to go along with all of the federal tax cuts President Donald Trump pushed through last year in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but, according to an attorney representing the Florida Chamber of Commerce, no state has gone as far in decoupling from the law as Florida is contemplating. And he’s not happy about it.
“We’re unaware of any other bill in the nation that proposes to fully remove every benefit from the Trump tax cuts,” Tallahassee lawyer and lobbyist French Brown told the Florida House Ways and Means Committee Thursday.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by Trump on the 4th of July last year, contained about $4.5 trillion in federal tax cuts over 10 years. It created temporary tax deductions for tips, overtime, and loan interest on new vehicles assembled in the United States. It temporarily raises caps on state and local tax deductions from $10,000 to $40,000, and it provides numerous tax breaks to businesses, including the ability to immediately write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research, as summarized by Fortune.
Florida’s GOP legislative leaders however, noting that economic projections show the state facing budget deficits in coming years, have opted not to apply the new federal changes to the state’s corporate income tax in bills passed in Senate and House committees this week.
“The House’s position is that, as was recognized in a previous question, the long-range financial outlook is mixed at best,” House Ways & Means Committee Chair Wyman Duggan said Thursday. “And we at this point in the process do not want to engage in forgoing that kind of recurring revenue until we have a more clear stance of the scope of this year’s budget, for example, and some other considerations.”
Duggan said that if the Legislature implements all of the five federal tax break “silos” with full retroactivity to January 2025, it would cost the state $3.1 billion.
But Brown says “decoupling isn’t a binary operation.” There is a “range of options” the Legislature could still implement as the tax bill goes through the budgeting process in the next couple of weeks, he said.
“I don’t stand here just to beg for tax relief,” he said. “Decoupling from the Trump tax cuts truly creates an administrative burden on Florida businesses. It’s going to require them to keep separate Florida books and records from their federal books and records.”
‘The right thing for Florida’
Ways & Means approved the $251 million tax package (PCB WMC 26-01) unanimously Thursday. Its provisions include:
- Exempting the sales of certain propane tanks.
- Exempting firearm accessories from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.
- Adopting a four-month sales tax holiday on certain outdoor supplies.
- Adjusting the dates of the Back to School tax holiday from August to July 20 through Aug. 20.
The decoupling portion of the tax bill is “the right thing for Florida,” said Orlando Rep. Anna Eskamani, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
“I empathize with concerns of administrative burdens,” she said about the Chamber’s complaint. “But the reality is that $3 billion is huge for us right now and we are trying to operate a budget that is balanced, that is going to be strong in the face of upcoming potential storms.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized several blue states in December that announced they were decoupling from portions of the federal law, calling it “a blatant act of political obstructionism” and said they were “deliberately blocking their own residents from receiving these historic benefits at the state level.”