The Florida Boat Tax Costs Way More Than It Brings In

If you own a million dollar yacht and register it in Rhode Island, the tax would be $600.  In North Carolina you’d pay $1500, South Carolina a mere $500. But if you docked your Hatteras yacht in Florida, you’d have to pay a whopping $60,000 in tax.  Wonder why 8 out of 10 boats there feature flags of other nations fluttering off their sterns.

This costs the state of Florida as much as $120 million in lost revenues, in jobs, and in fewer repairs and other business from the boats. Yet giving up the tax itself was said to cost $1.4 million in lost tax revenue. Again and again, when government jumps in to grab taxes ‘on the rich’ they end up costing the average person who might rely on the boat business for a living to take a hit.  And ultimately these taxes lose more than they gain, it’s just in people’s pockets instead of the government’s.

Up in Maine a few years ago, the Hinckley Yacht company just about died and laid off most of their workers when in 1990, a tax was levied on luxury boats. Any boat over $100,000 was subject to a 10% tax.  The result was that the rich bought their boats from the Bahamas and elsewhere. The tax was repealed in 1993, so it was a good lesson.