Incentives

Greater Fort Lauderdale offers relocating and expanding businesses a wide range of benefits, including:

Providing state and county documents
Providing requested information
Providing financial assistance
Streamlined regulatory processes
Low taxes
A highly responsive economic development system

The advantages of doing business in Greater Fort Lauderdale carry over to the personal side, where individuals pay no state or local personal income taxes, giving companies an added enticement in recruiting executives, professionals and technology workers.

For a list of targeted industries which are available for potential incentives when expanding or relocating a business, please click here. Examples of the available incentives include, but are not limited to:

High Impact Performance Incentive Grant (HIPI)

The High Impact Performance Incentive Grant (HIPI) is a negotiated grant used to attract and grow major high-impact facilities in Florida. Grants are provided to pre-approved applicants in certain high-impact sectors designated by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO).

In order to qualify for consideration under the program, an applicant must operate within designated high impact portions of the following sectors: clean energy, corporate headquarters, financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, and transportation equipment manufacturing; create at least 50 new full-time equivalent jobs in Florida within a three-year period and make a cumulative investment in the state of at least $50 million within the same three year period; or if a research and development facility, create at least 25 new full-time equivalent jobs in a three year period and make a cumulative investment of at least $25 million within the same three year period.

Capital Investment Tax Credit (CITC)

To encourage investment, Florida offers a Capital Investment Tax Credit to qualifying companies. To participate in the program, a company must apply to Enterprise Florida and be certified by the Governor’s Office prior to commencement of operations. To qualify for consideration, an applicant must operate within designated high impact portions of the following sectors: clean energy, corporate headquarters, financial services, information technology, life sciences, semiconductors, and transportation equipment manufacturing; create at least 100 new jobs in Florida in connection with the project; and make a cumulative capital investment of at least $25 million in connection with the project from the beginning of construction to the commencement of operations.

The amount of the annual credit is up to 5 percent of the eligible capital costs generated by a qualifying project, for up to 20 years (with any unused portion being carried over for an additional 10 years). The annual credit may not exceed a specified percentage of the annual corporate income tax liability generated by the project. Those percentages are: 100 percent for a project with a cumulative capital investment of at least $100 million; 75 percent for a project with a cumulative capital investment of at least $50 million but less than $100 million; and 50 percent for a project with a cumulative capital investment of at least $25 million but less than $50 million.

Broward County Job Growth Incentive (JG)

The Job Growth direct cash incentive is a negotiated local community inducement designed to encourage the growth of high-skill/high-wage qualified jobs and capital investment in Broward County. This program requires the joint participation of Broward County and the municipality in which the company is and/or will be located. The business must serve multi-state and/or international markets while considering other states for the expansion/relocation. New or expanding businesses in targeted industries or corporate headquarters are eligible; a minimum of 10 new jobs must be created. New jobs must be at a minimum of 115 percent of Broward County’s average wage for up to $2,000 per job. The county’s portion is not to exceed $200,000.

Quick Response Training Incentives

The Florida Quick Response Training grant program is designed to assist qualified relocating and expanding Florida businesses. This program is customized, flexible and responsive to individual company needs. Workforce Florida, Inc. is Florida’s innovative private-public partnership for competitive workforce incentives.

Incumbent Worker Training Program

Incumbent Worker Training is a state program providing training to currently employed workers to keep Florida’s workforce competitive in a global economy and to retain existing businesses. The program is available to all for-profit Florida businesses in operation for at least one year prior to application and requires training for existing employees. Funded by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and administered by CareerSource Florida, this program was created to provide financial support upgrading the skills of full-time employees, while reducing training costs.

Training can be done in-house utilizing outside vendors, education partners or public or private training institutions and can also be delivered from existing curricula that cater to specific business needs. The programs can increase skills and productivity at every level of an organization.

Some of the tax advantages for being located in Florida include:

NO corporate income tax on limited partnerships
NO corporate income tax on subchapter S-corporations
NO state personal income tax guaranteed by constitutional provision
NO corporate franchise tax on capital stock
NO state-level property tax assessed
NO property tax on business inventories
NO property tax on goods-in-transit for up to 180 days
NO sales and use tax on goods manufactured or produced in Florida for export outside the state
NO sales tax on purchases of raw materials incorporated in a final product for resale, including non-reusable containers or packaging
NO sales/use tax on boiler fuels
NO sales/use tax on co-generation of electricity

Florida also provides tax exemptions and offers sales on:

Semiconductor, defense and space technology-based industry transactions involving manufacturing or research equipment
Purchases of machinery and equipment used by a new or expanding Florida business to manufacture, produce or process tangible personal property for sale
Labor, parts and materials used in repair of and incorporated into machinery and equipment that qualify for sales tax exemption upon purchase
Electricity used in the manufacturing process
Aircraft parts, modification, maintenance and repair, sale or lease of qualified aircraft
Commercial space activity – launch vehicles, payloads and fuel, machinery and equipment for production of items used exclusively at Spaceport Florida
Labor component of research and development expenditures
Any facility, device, fixture, machinery or equipment required for pollution control, abatement or monitoring of equipment used in manufacturing processing or compounding items for sale

For information on incentives and other assistance to companies considering an expansion or relocation to Greater Fort Lauderdale, please call the Alliance's Director of Business Development at 954-627-0124.