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Sales and Tax Collections

Sales and Tax Collections throughout Northwest Florida, Mobile and Baldwin Counties

 

Gross Sales, Taxable Sales and Tax Collections

The gross sales have trended upward across most counties between 2012 and 2020. Okaloosa County had an exceptional rise of $2B between 2017 and 2019, an increase of 20%. The Covid-19 Pandemic negatively impacted the gross sales in every county, save for Santa Rosa, which actually trended positively in 2020. 

When looking at taxable sales Escambia County has by far the largest at $6.1B in 2020, with Okaloosa at the second highest at $4.8B. This shows that although Okaloosa County has the highest gross sales, a much lower percentage of those sales are taxable. Specifically, 60% of the gross sales in Escambia County were taxable whereas Okaloosa's was around 40%. 

The higher taxable sales contribute to Escambia County's tax collections of $368M.


 

Local Options Sales Tax Collections (LOST)

LOST for 2020 have largely been unreported due to COVID-19 slowing reporting down. Escambia County generally has the highest collection totals in Northwest Florida, though not much can be said due to lack of reporting. 


 

Definitions and How it's Measured

Gross sales in this page is the total of all sales transactions that occur in a given county. Taxable sales are gross sales minus any sales that are exempt from being taxed, like groceries or any transactions from entities such as 501(c) nonprofits. Six percent of taxable sales are then collected by the state of Florida, making up Tax Collections.

Local option sales tax collections (LOST) are similar to taxable sales except the individual counties collect tax rather than the state. These collections are defined by the county. For instance, Escambia County collects 1.5% on top of Florida's 6% sales tax on taxable purchases, making the total sales tax 7.5%.

All of our tax collection data comes from the Florida Department of Revenue.