Florida's agricultural exemption works like this: a farmer whose property is classified as agricultural (or who follows state-approved best management practices on land they own or lease) applies to the Florida Department of Revenue and, once approved, gets a plastic, wallet-sized TEAM Card from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. When that farmer buys qualifying items at your store, they hand you the card (or a paper exemption certificate), you sell the qualifying items tax-free, and you keep a copy of the card or certificate, or an authorization number, in your records, generally for three years. The exemption covers specific farm inputs, not everything on the ticket, so the feed goes out tax-free while the cat food on the same counter does not.
A Tuesday morning at the counter
Picture a rancher at your counter with a $27.54 bag of cattle feed, two rolls of barbed wire, a bottle of wormer, and a $20.89 bag of cat food. She mentions she's tax exempt. The feed qualifies under Florida law for anyone, card or no card. The wire and the wormer can qualify too, but only with the right document in hand. The cat food is taxable, because Florida's feed exemption is written for livestock and poultry, and barn cats do not count as livestock no matter how hard they work the mice. Knowing which is which, and what paper backs it up, is the whole job at the register.
Who qualifies for the Florida agricultural exemption
The exemption belongs to the farmer, and Florida defines "farmer" broadly. GT-800057 describes a farmer as a person "directly engaged in the business of producing crops, livestock, or other agricultural commodities," and the list runs from cattle ranchers, dairy farmers, and poultry farmers to horse breeders, nurserymen, apiarists, and people raising fish.
To get the TEAM Card, a farmer must be someone "whose property has been classified as agricultural pursuant to s. 193.461, F.S., or who has implemented agricultural best management practices adopted by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services" on property they own or lease, according to the state's FAQ. The farmer applies on Form DR-1 TEAM, online or by mail, and can request up to 10 cards per applicant, which covers the farm manager or family member who also buys for the operation. The FAQ confirms "there is no charge for a TEAM Card," so if a farmer tells you they're waiting on theirs, it isn't a fee holding things up.
What the farmer hands you: the TEAM Card or a paper certificate
Since the start of 2024, the card is the easy path. "On January 1, 2024, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services began issuing Florida TEAM Cards to farmers who applied to and were approved by the Florida Department of Revenue," and TEAM stands for Farm Tax Exempt Agricultural Materials. The point of the card is convenience: farmers "can present the plastic, wallet-sized card to selling dealers instead of preparing a paper exemption certificate for each purchase."
Two things to keep straight about the card. First, the cards "expire five years after the date of issuance," and at renewal the Department uses its available information to decide whether the holder still qualifies or asks for documentation. Second, the card is documentation, not a magic wand. GT-800057 notes that it "does not expand or create agricultural exemptions beyond those provided in s. 212.08, F.S." A card in hand does not make cat food exempt.
The paper route still works. Farmers who don't qualify for a card, or don't want one, "may continue to provide an exemption certificate," and it "must contain the purchaser's name and address, the reason the item qualifies for exemption, and the signature of the purchaser or an authorized representative." The state's suggested form is Exhibit #1 in GT-800057, the "Suggested Exemption Certificate: Items for Agricultural Use or for Agricultural Purposes and Power Farm Equipment," and it carries a warning worth knowing: fraudulent use leaves the purchaser liable "for payment of the tax plus a penalty of 200% of the tax" and may be a third-degree felony. One practical relief for you: with a paper certificate, dealers "are only required to obtain one certificate for sales made for the purposes indicated on the certificate," so you don't need a fresh one for every repeat visit on the same exempt purpose.
What qualifies and what does not
This is where the counter earns its keep. Some farm items are exempt for anyone, no card or certificate needed, because the law exempts the item itself. As GT-800057 puts it, "when an item is specifically tax-exempt according to Florida law, and the exemption is not based upon the use of the item or use by a specific type of user, an exemption certificate is not required." Other items are exempt only when a qualified farmer buys them for agricultural use, and those need the TEAM Card copy, an authorization number, or a certificate.
| Exempt with no certificate at all | Exempt only with a TEAM Card copy, authorization number, or certificate |
|---|---|
| Feed for poultry, ostriches, and livestock, including racehorses and dairy cows, when labeled for pigs, hogs, poultry, ostrich, horse, mules, cattle, buffalo, bison, or other grazing animals | Animal health products for livestock or poultry: antiseptics, absorbent cotton, gauze bandages, lotions, vaccines, vitamins, worm remedies |
| Field seeds, flower seeds, and seeds for producing food for human consumption | Disinfectants, fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and weed killers used on crops, groves, nurseries, home vegetable gardens, dairy barns, poultry farms, or directly on animals (fertilizer includes topsoil, peat, peat moss, rooting sand, compost, and manure) |
| Growth or performance enhancers for cattle | Fencing materials to construct or repair fencing used to contain, confine, or process cattle (gates, energizers and chargers, electric fence wire, insulators, ground rods, posts, nails, screws, staples, hinges), plus hog wire and barbed wire used in agricultural production, on lands classified as agricultural |
| Portable generators of 10,000 running watts or less | Seedlings, cuttings, and plants used to produce food for human consumption |
| Items used to contain, produce, or process a commodity: baling wire and twine for hay, plant stakes, cloth or plastic for shade, mulch, or frost protection on a farm | |
| Power farm equipment and irrigation equipment, including repairs, replacement parts, and accessories used exclusively in agricultural production: tractors, mowers, chainsaws, augers, livestock feeders, sprayers, ATVs, and parts like tires, batteries, hoses, pumps, sprinkler heads, blades, and lubricants | |
| Farm trailers bought for exclusive agricultural use |
A few things sit firmly on the taxable side, per GT-800057. Fill dirt "is not an agricultural product and is subject to tax." Ornamental nursery stock, meaning the plants, shrubs, and trees customarily sold for landscaping, is taxable even though food-producing seedlings are exempt. And the farm trailer exemption covers the purchase only: trailer leases and rentals, and trailer repairs, parts, and accessories, are not covered. On the feed side, the exemption is written for livestock and poultry feed, so dog and cat food doesn't ride along on it.
What your counter has to collect, check, and keep
For a TEAM Card sale, the state's TIP for sellers gives you three ways to document it:
- Keep a copy of the card. Dealers "are required to obtain a copy of the farmer's TEAM Card" for exempt sales during the card's effective period, and "a selling dealer who accepts the TEAM Card in good faith will not be held liable for any tax due on sales made to the farmer during the effective period indicated on the card." Make the copy at the counter, the first time the card shows up, so it is in the file before the first exempt sale.
- Get a transaction authorization number. Through the Certificate Verification System at floridarevenue.com/taxes/certificates or the automated line at (877) 357-3725, you can request a number "valid for a single transaction only" instead of keeping the card copy.
- Get a vendor authorization number for regulars. For farmers who buy from you every week, you can request "a customer-specific number" online that's valid for the effective period of their card, so you're not re-copying the same card every truck day.
Whichever route you pick, you can check a card's validity any time at the same verification page or by calling (877) 357-3725, and the smart habit is to check when a card first shows up at your counter.
On retention, GT-800057 says "selling businesses must maintain copies of exemption certificates and TEAM cards and authorization numbers until the tax ... may no longer be determined and assessed," which for a registered dealer "is generally three years from the date of the purchase." The same brochure spells out the good-faith protection that makes this workable: "businesses who accept an exemption certificate or TEAM card for a tax-exempt sale made in good faith will not be assessed sales and use tax or surtax on the sale," and the Department "will look solely to the purchaser." Take the document in good faith, file it, and the risk sits where it belongs.
Mixed tickets: exempt the item, not the person
Here's the principle that keeps your audits clean: the exemption belongs to the farmer, but the audit risk belongs to the store, so you exempt the item, not the person. A TEAM Card doesn't turn everything in the cart tax-free. It covers the qualifying items on the ticket, and everything else, the cat food, the work gloves, the gift for the grandkids, rings up taxable as usual.
Back to our rancher: the cattle feed is exempt for anyone, no document needed, because of how it's labeled. The barbed wire and the wormer are exempt because she's a qualified farmer, the wire is going on agricultural land, and you've documented her card. The cat food is taxable, full stop. If your point of sale can't split a ticket by item, your counter staff ends up either over-taxing the farmer (bad for the relationship) or under-taxing the ticket (bad for your audit). Item-level tax settings are the difference between a two-minute conversation and a corrected invoice.
If you sell to contractors too, the same item-versus-person logic applies to their paperwork, and our guide to resale and tax exemption certificates for contractors walks that side of the counter. For the multi-state picture, our farm and ag tax exemption overview covers how other states handle the same problem, and our Georgia GATE card guide covers the neighbors to the north. Farmers who run a tab need the same care on their charge accounts and statements, since an exempt line on a charge sale still needs its document behind it.
Expiration, renewals, and "I'll bring my card next week"
TEAM Cards last five years, and the FAQ explains that when one expires, the Department decides from its available information whether the farmer still qualifies or asks them for documentation. That's the state's side of it. Your side is simpler: no valid document in hand means no exempt sale.
The regular who says "my card's at the house, I'll bring it next week" is the classic counter moment, and the answer that protects you is to collect the tax today and start exempting sales once the document is in your file. If the customer wants the tax back on today's ticket, handle it the way Florida's refund rules allow, because tax you collected and later return is a much smaller problem than tax you never collected and now owe. What you can't do is explain to an auditor why a stack of untaxed invoices has nothing behind them. The same goes for an expired card: check the effective dates on the copy you keep, because the good-faith protection covers sales "during the effective period indicated on the card," not after it.
How Rundoo handles it
Rundoo is built for exactly this kind of split ticket. A farmer's tax exemption number lives on their customer account, and each product can be marked single-use non-taxable, so the exemption applies only to the items that qualify: the feed comes up exempt while the cat food on the same ticket is taxed. (A blanket exemption number, which exempts the whole ticket, is the right fit for schools, churches, and government buyers, not farms.) You can attach a scan or a phone photo of the TEAM Card or certificate to the customer's file, including from the mobile app, so the document is there when you need it. Rundoo records the number but doesn't check it against the state's database, so verification stays with you, the same way it does at floridarevenue.com/taxes/certificates. One thing to train on: a completed sale is final, so fixing the tax on a finished invoice means refunding it and checking the customer out again. Come report time, the tax report breaks out taxable revenue, non-taxable revenue, and tax owed by jurisdiction, and you can ask Dooey to pull last month's tax-exempt transactions when you want to spot-check the file. If you switch from another system, your customers' tax-exempt IDs migrate over with their accounts. You can see how this fits a store like yours on our farm and feed page.
The one-line version
Exempt the item, keep the paper (or the number), and check the date on the card, and a Florida audit becomes a filing exercise instead of a bill.
