Food Trucks · Jacksonville, FL
Florida Sales Tax and Food Trucks: What Happens If You Haven't Been Collecting It Right
By Remi Matteo · Matteo Bookkeeping · Jacksonville, FL
TL;DR
- Prepared food is taxable in Florida. Sales tax is based on where the sale happens, not where the truck is based.
- Duval, St. Johns, Clay, and Nassau counties do not all charge the same combined rate.
- Cash sales still owe sales tax. Skipping it on cash orders is one of the most common mistakes.
Food trucks have one bookkeeping problem most other small businesses do not: the sales tax rate can change depending on which parking lot you're in that day. It sounds minor until it's been wrong for a year and someone finally asks about it.
Prepared food is taxable, groceries are not
Florida exempts most grocery items from sales tax, but prepared food, which is what a food truck sells, is taxed at the full combined rate. This trips up owners who assume "it's food, it's exempt." It is not. Every plate, taco, or bowl sold off the truck should have sales tax collected on it.
The rate depends on where you're parked, not where you're based
Florida charges a state rate of 6% plus a county surtax that varies by location. Jacksonville and the rest of Duval County run at 7.5%. Nassau County is 7%. St. Johns County can run lower depending on the specific jurisdiction within the county. If your truck works festivals, events, and lunch spots across more than one of these counties, the correct rate changes with the address, not with where the truck is registered.
Where owners actually get this wrong
Charging one flat rate everywhere
Setting the POS system to Duval's 7.5% and never adjusting it for events in a lower-rate county means over-collecting there, which can require refunding the difference.
Not collecting tax on cash sales
Card sales get taxed automatically through the POS. Cash sales sometimes do not, whether by habit or oversight, and it is one of the first things that stands out in an audit because the ratio of cash sales to card sales tends to look off.
Mixing sales tax in with revenue
Sales tax collected from customers is not your money. It needs to sit separately and get remitted to the state, not get spent as if it were part of the day's earnings.
Not tracking which county each sale happened in
Florida wants sales tax reported and remitted by jurisdiction. Without a record of where each sale happened, reconstructing that later is slow and error-prone.
If you think it's already been wrong for a while
This is fixable. Going back through prior months to reclassify sales by location and correct what was collected is exactly what catch-up bookkeeping is for. Better to correct it on your own terms than to discover the gap during a state review.
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