Florida LLC structure and cost: no income tax, but the deed tax finds the mortgage

Florida charges no individual income tax, which is most of why people and companies move here. What surprises real estate owners is the tax it does charge: a documentary stamp tax on the deed when you move property into your own LLC. The good news is that it reaches only the part you still owe the bank.

This page is the honest ledger of the entity here: the tax that is genuinely absent, the deed tax that is not, the privacy Florida does not offer, and the series structure it authorized three weeks before this page was written.

Florida’s income tax is genuinely gone, and its deed tax finds the mortgage on anything you move into an LLC.

Where the entity actually lives

A Florida LLC has a birthplace and a residence, and the where your LLC lives doctrine decides which controls what. Florida governs the internal affairs on the governance page; where you operate governs tax and the courtroom. For a Florida resident the point is sharper than usual: a Florida membership interest is treated as located where the owner lives, which is why forming out of state does not escape the single-member exposure on the protection page.

No income tax, with one corporate asterisk

Florida’s constitution bars a personal income tax, and there is no franchise tax on LLCs.

Florida takes no individual income tax, but a company taxed as a C-corp pays 5.5% on its Florida income.

A pass-through LLC owes no Florida income tax; its income flows to the members’ federal returns. An LLC that elects to be taxed as a C-corporation pays Florida’s 5.5% corporate income tax on Florida-source income. Florida also runs a 6% sales and use tax, plus local surtaxes, on taxable goods and services. For most small operating LLCs, the only recurring state cost is the annual report on the filing page.

The documentary stamp tax, and the mortgage that triggers it

Here is the tax that catches people moving property into an entity, and the rule that decides whether it bites.

Move an unencumbered building into your own LLC and Florida charges nothing; move a mortgaged one and it taxes the debt.

Florida imposes a documentary stamp tax of $0.70 per $100 of consideration on deeds, $0.60 in Miami-Dade. In Crescent Miami Center v. Department of Revenue, the Florida Supreme Court held that transferring unencumbered real property to a wholly owned entity, with the same ownership on both sides and no exchange of value, is not subject to the tax, because there is no consideration and no purchaser. The legislature accepted that reading. So contributing a debt-free building into an LLC you already own costs nothing but the recording fee.

The trap is the mortgage. Consideration includes the balance of any debt on the property, so contributing a mortgaged building triggers the tax on the loan balance. A $1,000,000 building with a $600,000 mortgage moved into your own LLC carries documentary stamp tax on the $600,000, about $4,200, even though nothing really changed hands. There is one more limit worth knowing: since 2009, if you drop unencumbered property into an entity and then sell the interest in that entity within three years, Florida taxes the sale as if the property itself had been sold. The clean move is to contribute debt-free property, or to plan for the tax on the debt, and not to sell the entity within three years.

Do not put your homestead in the LLC

One structure decision on this page overrides almost everything else for a Florida resident.

Titling your Florida homestead in an LLC destroys the creditor exemption and the property-tax break.

The constitutional homestead protection runs to a home owned by a natural person, so moving your home into an LLC forfeits both the unlimited creditor exemption described on the protection page and the homestead property-tax cap. A revocable living trust preserves both. This is a common and expensive mistake, and the answer is simply not to do it.

Privacy is weak, and series LLCs are brand new

Two more structure facts, one a limit and one a new option.

Florida lists your members or managers on a public report every year, so the LLC is not a privacy tool.

The annual report discloses the names and Florida addresses of the LLC’s members or managers, so Florida is not a privacy state the way Wyoming is. The anonymous LLC page covers the general limits.

Florida authorized protected series LLCs effective July 1, 2026, so the old “Florida has no series” advice is now wrong.

As of July 1, 2026, Florida’s Uniform Protected Series Provisions, Fla. Stat. §§ 605.2101 through 605.2802, let a Florida LLC create protected series, each with its own assets and liability shield, by filing a protected series designation. Each series name must carry the master LLC’s name plus “Protected Series” or “P.S.,” and the shield holds only with strict record segregation per series. The structure is brand new, so its bankruptcy treatment and how a charging order reaches across series are untested. The series LLC page covers what the walls are worth.

Trusts and moving the company

Florida enacted a community property trust in 2021, an opt-in tool for married couples chasing a capital gains basis step-up, which is tax planning rather than a creditor shield. Florida permits conversion and domestication, so a company can enter or leave as the same legal entity; as always, read the company’s own contracts for change-of-control clauses first, and move before any creditor appears.

The bottom line

Florida charges no individual income tax and no franchise tax; a C-corp pays 5.5% on Florida income, and sales tax is 6% plus local surtaxes.

Contributing unencumbered property to your own LLC carries no documentary stamp tax under Crescent, but a mortgage on the property is taxed at $0.70 per $100 of the balance.

Selling the interest in an entity within three years of dropping property into it triggers the tax on the sale.

Never title your Florida homestead in an LLC; it forfeits the exemption and the tax cap, while a revocable trust keeps both.

Florida discloses members or managers on a public report, and it authorized protected series LLCs on July 1, 2026, still untested.

What this page does not cover

This page is about where the entity lives, what it can be, and what it costs to hold. How creditors reach you, including the homestead and the single-member exposure, is on the protection page. What the statute lets your operating agreement do is on the governance page. The exact fees, forms, and the steep late penalty are on the filing page.

Last verified July 2026.