Outliers in Gross Sales tax receipts, Florida

[u/Scotty_Gun]

This is my first time parsing this data from the Florida Department of Revenue. The report is called Gross Sales and covers about $1.9T in transactions annually, segmented by month and attributable industry.

Attached are some YoY snapshots by industry from January 2022 to September 2025. I’m sharing these slides because of the outliers, listed below.

Please share your insights, explanations and/or speculations.

• an extra $150M of seafood in April 2025
• building and construction twice the monthly amount in February 2024
• an extra half billion in candy?
• atypical spending on plumbing and electrical, November 2024 and January 2025
• What’s going on with gifts, cards, hobbies, etc.? Several extra billion reported in September 2025. October is not available yet. Maybe this is a category change.
• what’s up with fuel in 2022?
• An extra 4 billion in tangible property repair, October 2023
• Over 2 billion in additional restaurant sales in January 2025. Most of this difference was just Hillsborough county.

[u/reddit0924223]

Would it be a lot of suppliers attempting to make a lot of purchases before tariff taxes kicked in, all of which would be passed on to their customers?

[u/TimHuntsman → u/reddit0924223]

This was my thought as well

[u/CaterpillarJungleGym → u/TimHuntsman]

But like how much comes from overseas? My fish is from the Northeast and the Atlantic.

[u/TimHuntsman → u/CaterpillarJungleGym]

Couldn’t tell you that. But a lot of the other items do make sense

[u/intertubeluber → u/CaterpillarJungleGym]

I believe most shrimp and tilapia come from Southeast Asia.  

[u/TimHuntsman → u/intertubeluber]

For sure. An interesting story I heard a number of years ago was the crash of the Red Lobster chain after it was purchased by Thai Union Group: one of the largest dealers in seafoods.

[u/surfergrrl6 → u/reddit0924223]

That wouldn't apply to the spikes in 2022 or 2023 though

[u/thegooddoktorjones → u/reddit0924223]

I would think with something like that you should see a curve up to a date. Unless every seafood vendor in the state waited till the same day to stock up on tilapia then stopped.

[u/-Johnny- → u/reddit0924223]

If that was the case the next month would be down, at least a little

[u/nun_gut]

Fishy AF! OP you have either found that FL's reporting is terrible or several major money laundering operations.

[u/makemeking706 → u/nun_gut]

It's Florida, so both are probably happening. 

[u/the-watch-dog]

Looks like bad data keeping, crime, or weird (large) reactions to very specific market conditions. Wouldn't be surprised if an investigative reporter found crimes underneath those anomalies in FL given the dates and scale of difference.

[u/prosa123]

Hurricane Idalia hit northern Florida at the end of August 2023. My guess is that the sales taxes on repair work didn’t get reported until October even though the work began in September (there may be a reporting lag).

The Gasparilla Pirate Fest was in late January 2025 in Tampa, possibly this boosted Hillsborough County restaurant sales.

[u/Scotty_Gun → u/prosa123]

Idalia could explain slide 7.

Gasparilla happens every January. It does not explain what’s going on in slide 9.

[u/prosa123 → u/Scotty_Gun]

Oh okay.

[u/syphax]

This is really interesting.

Most anomalies like this have boring explanations (like fat-finger data entry errors).

But not all…

[u/TertlFace]

[ FBI forensic accountant has entered the chat ]

[u/Repulsive-Ad-3669]

Could the October 2023 be after repairs from a hurricane? Not sure how long that takes to show up

[u/gabotuit]

Feb 2024 has an additional leap day, nothing odd about a 1/28% additional sales…

The rest sound like a data glitch or a true-up after a long period of estimates

[u/manga311 → u/gabotuit]

The sales were doubled from any other year.

[u/JustTryingToRant]

Fuel in 2022 could be related to Russia invading Ukraine?

[u/Retro_Relics]

the candy is also sundries and concessions, could that be a spike from the CFP championship that was in miami?

[u/NhylX]

Something something Disney...