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United States · Florida · Miami

Card processing rules for Miami merchants

Most of what a payments company will tell a Miami business owner is Florida boilerplate that stops at the state line. This page covers what actually changes once you cross into Miami-Dade County — the county's own transit surtax stacked on Florida's state rate, and where the federal court case on Florida's surcharge statute leaves you.

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Miami-Dade's own surtax sits on top of the Florida rate, and it has a cap you have to know

Florida sets a 6% state sales tax rate, but it also lets individual counties layer a discretionary surtax on top, and the rate is not the same everywhere in the state — a business quoting Miami prices based on a generic "Florida sales tax" figure is quoting the wrong number. Miami-Dade County levies its own surtax, formally the Charter County Transportation System Surtax, at 1%, a rate it has held since being raised from 0.5% effective 1 January 2003 according to the county's own transit surtax ordinance, codified in Article XI of the Miami-Dade County Code of Ordinances. The Florida Department of Revenue's Office of Economic and Demographic Research publishes the resulting county-by-county rate table every fiscal year, and Miami-Dade appears at a combined 7%: 6% state plus 1% county.

The part that trips up businesses using a generic calculator is the surtax cap. Under both the county ordinance and the Department of Revenue's own discretionary surtax guidance, the 1% county surtax applies only to the first $5,000 of the sales price on a single item of tangible personal property — the state's 6% keeps applying to the full price, but the county's 1% stops accruing past that point. On a $9,000 piece of equipment, that means the surtax is calculated on $5,000, not $9,000. This only affects single-item purchases above the threshold, so it rarely changes a restaurant or quick-service ticket, but it matters for furniture stores, boat and marine dealers, appliance retailers and anyone selling big-ticket equipment inside the county.

Where this actually affects your processing setup

A POS or invoicing system configured with a flat 7% Miami-Dade tax rate on every line item will overcharge sales tax on any single item above $5,000, which is a compliance problem for you, not just a pricing quirk. If your business regularly sells big-ticket single items, confirm your POS tax engine actually applies the county surtax cap rather than a flat percentage across the board — most off-the-shelf configurations do not do this correctly out of the box.

7 percent combined in Miami-Dade — and you pay card fees on it

Interchange and your processor's discount rate are calculated on the full authorized amount, and the full authorized amount includes whatever sales tax you collect and remit. At a 7% combined rate, roughly 6.5% of every card-funded ticket in Miami-Dade is tax you never keep, and your effective processing rate still applies to it. On a $100 pre-tax sale you authorize $107, and every basis point of markup lands on that larger figure. That is arithmetic on a rate the Department of Revenue itself publishes, not an estimate.

We are not going to attach a dollar figure to what that costs you specifically, because it depends on your card mix, average ticket and pricing structure, and any processor who quotes a saving before reading your statement is guessing. What is worth knowing is that Florida's 7% Miami-Dade rate sits below several of the other metros we cover, which changes the relative weight of the tax component in your effective rate compared with a market like Chicago or Denver — a smaller share of your authorized volume is tax you never keep, so the leverage in negotiating your processing rate sits more in your card mix and average ticket than in the tax line.

How it plays out for Miami restaurants and shops

For a Miami restaurant, the surtax cap almost never applies, since a $5,000 single-item ticket is not how a restaurant bill is structured — the operative question is the same one every restaurant faces nationally, tip handling and whether a fee program calculates at authorization or settlement. Our restaurant payment processing hub covers that mechanic in general terms that apply in Miami along with everywhere else.

For Miami retail, especially furniture, marine, appliance and equipment dealers, the $5,000 surtax cap is a real and recurring factor in how sales tax gets calculated ticket by ticket, and it is worth confirming your POS handles it correctly rather than assuming a flat rate. Our retail payment processing hub sets out how to read your effective processing rate off a real statement once tax is accounted for correctly.

Sources

Updated 18 September 2026. General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change; confirm current rules with the Florida Department of Revenue, Miami-Dade County, your attorney and your accountant before you change how you price, charge tax or add a card fee.

Related pages

Miami FAQ

What Miami owners ask us

7%: the 6% Florida state rate plus a 1% Miami-Dade County discretionary surtax, officially the Charter County Transportation System Surtax. The Florida Department of Revenue's Office of Tax Research publishes the county-by-county surtax table every year, and Miami-Dade's rate has held at 1% since it was raised from 0.5% effective 1 January 2003. The proceeds are earmarked for the county's transit system under its People's Transportation Plan.

Not on tangible personal property above a threshold. Miami-Dade's own surtax ordinance and the Department of Revenue's guidance cap the surtax portion at the first $5,000 of a single item's sales price — the 6% state tax still applies to the full amount, but the 1% county surtax stops accruing past that $5,000 mark on one item. That is a county-level mechanic most out-of-state processors do not know to mention, and it only affects single big-ticket items, not an entire multi-item invoice.

Florida Statute 501.0117 still reads as a ban on credit card surcharging, but the Eleventh Circuit held it unconstitutional in Dana's Railroad Supply v. Attorney General, Florida in 2015, on the same First Amendment reasoning later used in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman. The statute has not been repealed by the Legislature. Our dedicated Florida surcharge law guide covers the required disclosure language processors expect if you add a fee, and none of that changes at the Miami-Dade or City of Miami level — surcharge law in Florida is set at the state and federal court level, not locally.

No. CELER Merchants is an independent merchant services agent and works remotely across Florida and every other state we cover. Statement analysis, quoting, onboarding and support all run by phone, email and video, so nothing about your account depends on where our desk is.

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