You registered with the state to collect Florida sales tax, and a second piece of paper came with the account. Suppliers keep asking you to send it over before they will take the tax off an invoice.
That paper is the Florida Annual Resale Certificate. It tells a supplier you are buying those goods to sell them again. Nobody charges you tax now, and your own customer pays it later. The state calls it form DR-13, which is only its number on the paperwork, and it works for one calendar year.
So the questions are practical ones. What can you put on it? What happens if you keep something you bought with it? And what do you do when a customer hands you theirs at your own counter?
By the end you will know what the certificate covers, what you owe if you keep something, what changes on December 31, what it saves you on one order in South Florida, and the three ways to record a tax free sale.
I am Dr. Michael Wendrow. I have run a chiropractic office in North Miami for more than 30 years, and I started Prime Time Business Network in 2012.
Key takeaways
- The certificate comes with your sales tax account. Stop filing returns and the state stops issuing you a new one.
- Take a customer's resale certificate without recording one of three things, and Florida bills you for the sales tax they did not pay.
- Use the resale certificate on something you keep, and Florida adds a penalty of twice the tax on top of the tax.
What a Florida annual resale certificate actually is
A Florida annual resale certificate buys goods and services with no sales tax on them, as long as you are going to resell or re-rent those items. The copy you hold now stops working on December 31.
- It comes with your sales tax account. There is nothing separate to apply for and nothing to buy.
- It covers what you resell, what you rent out again, and parts that end up inside what you sell.
- It covers nothing your business keeps and uses, however much you need that thing.
- A certificate for the year ahead shows up in your account every November.
Where that comes from: the Department of Revenue's own page on the Annual Resale Certificate, its sales and use tax brochure (GT-800013, revised October 2025), and Rule 12A-1.039 of the Florida Administrative Code. If you run an LLC, read this next to the report that keeps your company active. A company the state dissolves loses this certificate too.
Registering for sales tax gets you two documents, and owners mix them up all the time. Here is which is which.
The first is your Certificate of Registration, form DR-11. The state says it has to be displayed in a clearly visible place at your business. That one goes on the wall.
The second is the Annual Resale Certificate, form DR-13. It never goes on the wall. You send copies to the suppliers you buy from, and each supplier keeps that copy as the reason no tax was charged.
What the second one is not: a general pass on sales tax. It answers one question only, which is what you plan to do with the item in front of you.
Who qualifies for a Florida resale certificate, and who does not
You qualify because you collect Florida sales tax. No sales tax account means no certificate, and no way to get one.
The Department of Revenue lists the work that makes you register. Selling goods at retail is on that list. So are repairs to somebody's property, renting or leasing equipment, and charging admission. So is selling more than $100,000 a year into Florida from another state.
Plenty of businesses never do any of it. A consultant, a bookkeeper or a chiropractor sells nothing taxable, so Florida opens no sales tax account for them. With no account there is no resale certificate to issue, and those owners pay sales tax on what they buy like any other customer. Anyone telling them to get a certificate for their office supplies is wrong twice over.
If you do sell taxable goods or services, you register with the Florida Business Tax Application, form DR-1, online or on paper. That is how to get a resale certificate in Florida. Once the state approves the account, it issues both documents together.
What you can buy tax free with it
Three kinds of purchase qualify, and one question sorts almost every item you buy.
The first is goods you resell the way they arrive, which is most of what a shop buys. The second is property you rent out again, which is the rule a party rental lives on. The third is parts that become part of what you sell, and the state's own examples are nails, fabric and wood. Services count as well, when you resell them inside your own regular work.
Then the question: does the item leave with your customer, or do you keep it?
One order can hold both kinds. Put the certificate against the lines you will resell, and pay the tax on the rest of the invoice.
What you owe when you keep something you bought tax free
You owe the tax yourself, on the return you already file.
Say twelve cases arrive on your certificate, and one of them never reaches a customer because you opened it for the staff room. The state stops treating that case as inventory. You are now the buyer at the end of the line.
What you owe is use tax, which is the same tax you would have paid at the register, paid by you after the fact. The Department of Revenue says it in one sentence: if the goods bought for resale are later used, you must report and pay use tax and surtax on those items.
It goes on your sales and use tax return, form DR-15, for the period you used the item. Nobody sends you a bill for this, which is why an auditor goes looking for it.
Your certificate at the end of the year
Every Florida annual resale certificate expires on December 31, whoever is holding it. You renew nothing and you apply for nothing.
There is no Florida resale certificate renewal to file, and no fee to pay. The state posts next year's certificate to your account in November, and you download and print it there. That happens while your registration is live, so a dealer who stopped filing returns can find the new one missing.
January is the month that catches people, in both directions. The copy your supplier holds for you is a dead document on January 1, and so is the copy you took from a trade customer in October.
Three things fix it. Download the new certificate in November. Email it to every supplier who has one of yours. Then in January, ask your trade customers for their new copy. Do it before the first tax free sale of the year, or run their number through the verification site.
What the certificate saves you on one South Florida order
Seven cents on every dollar of inventory, in the three counties this group covers. That number is two pieces added together.
The state rate is 6% on sales and purchases of goods, services and transient rentals. Most counties add a discretionary sales surtax on top, which is the county's own share of the sales tax. The Department of Revenue prints every county's rate on form DR-15DSS.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach each sit at 1% on the current chart. Add the two rates and you get 7%. The chart is reissued every November, and Palm Beach's 1% runs through December 31, 2026. Read your own county's row before you price next year's work.
The county penny also has a limit. On most goods only the first $5,000 of any one item is subject to the surtax. On a $12,000 machine the county's share stops at $5,000, and the state's 6% runs across the whole price.
The three ways to record a sale when a customer hands you a certificate
Pick one of the three on every tax free sale you make. The person who pays for a missing record is you: Florida Statute 212.07(1)(b) says a dealer who makes a sale for resale that is not in strict compliance is liable for and must pay the tax.
Rule 12A-1.039 of the Florida Administrative Code sets out what counts, and it gives you three options rather than one. Two of them are a Florida resale certificate verification run with the state. The third is keeping the paper your customer hands you.
| How you record it | What you do at the sale | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Keep a copy of the certificate | Take a paper or electronic copy of the customer's current certificate and file it. | Keep it three years. |
| Get a transaction authorization number | Check the number online, in the FL Tax-Verify app, or by calling 877-357-3725, and write down the answer. | That one sale. |
| Get a vendor authorization number | Run your regular customers through the department's verification site once, and keep what it returns. | The rest of that calendar year. |
With a handful of trade customers, the copy is the easy one. Sell to the same thirty contractors every month and the vendor number is better, because it stops your counter staff deciding on a Saturday.
What it costs to use the certificate on the wrong thing
Florida wrote the number into the statute, and it is a big one. Section 212.085 covers a person who issues a certificate claiming exemption to evade tax. They owe the tax, plus a mandatory penalty of 200 percent of the tax. The statute makes it punishable as a felony of the third degree.
Set that beside the ordinary mistake, because the two are not the same event. Buying a case for resale and drinking it in the break room is the use tax paragraph above, fixed on your next return. Sending a supplier your certificate for a laptop you always meant to keep is this one.
How our chapters help you settle a question like this
We built Prime Time Business Network so an owner never has to guess at a question another member answers for a living. We run fifteen chapters across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, and every chapter seats one business per category.
- The bookkeeper and the accountant in our room are not competing with you. Your question gets an answer, not a sales call.
- Chapters meet every two weeks, in person and on video, so a question does not sit until quarter end.
- The owners beside you file the same Florida paperwork you do, from the fictitious name registration to the sales tax return.
- When another member needs what you sell, they know which category seat you hold and send the work your way.
Common questions about the Florida resale certificate
Can a customer from another state use their own resale certificate with me? Not in the same way. The Department of Revenue points sellers to Rule 12A-1.0015(3) of the Florida Administrative Code for sales to dealers who are not registered here, so that sale takes a different set of papers.
Is this the same as a tax exempt certificate? No. Florida gives a separate document, the Consumer's Certificate of Exemption, to organizations that are exempt from sales tax themselves. A resale certificate says nothing about you being exempt. It says the tax on this item is coming later, from your customer.
What do I do if November comes and no new certificate appears? Check the account before you chase the paper. The state issues the certificate to dealers registered to collect sales tax, so a lapsed registration or an unfiled return is the usual reason. The certificate turns up once the account is current.
Bring the paperwork questions to a room of owners
If you would rather work through the sales tax calendar with owners who file it alongside you, find the chapter that fits your business category and ask Mark Hirsch whether that seat is open.