Things To Do In SW Florida

TALLAHASSEE — A more than decadelong push by business groups will pay off next week with the end of a state sales tax on commercial leases.

The tax, widely known as the business rent tax, will go away Oct. 1 after 57 years as part of a wide-ranging tax package that lawmakers passed in June.

The change will come as nearly 30 new laws hit the books Oct. 1.

“By Florida eliminating the business rent tax, it’s going to lower the cost of doing business in Florida, which will help lower the cost of living here,” Florida Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Mark Wilson said.

The business rent tax began in 1968, when the state sales-tax rate stood at 4%. The rent tax rate increased as the overall sales-tax rate went up in 1984 and 1988, reaching 6%.

Over the past decade, with business groups clamoring against the tax, legislators slowly chipped away at the rent tax rate. It has been 2% since June 2024, according to a House staff analysis.

The elimination is projected to collectively save businesses nearly $1.15 billion during the current fiscal year, which will run through June 30. That amount is projected to increase to $1.53 billion next fiscal year. read more

By RIO YAMAT

Spirit Airlines plans to furlough 1,800 flight attendants before the end of the year, the cash-strapped budget carrier said Monday.

The company said it made the “difficult decision” to put cabin crew members on temporary leave to match staffing needs with expected flight demand during Spirit’s second bankruptcy in a year.

“We recognize the impact of this decision on affected team members, and we are committed to treating them with care and respect during this process,” the airline said in a statement.

Spirit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month and subsequently announced that it planned to suspend operations in about a dozen U.S. cities beginning in October.

The union that represents the airline’s flight attendants said Monday that Spirit would seek candidates willing to take six month or one year voluntary furloughs starting Nov. 1 before moving forward with involuntary furloughs based on seniority effective Dec. 1.

The Association of Flight Attendants said it was working to secure “preferential interviews” with other airlines for furloughed flight attendants. read more

By ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press

Two of the nation’s biggest real estate services companies are combining in a deal that will bring Century 21, Compass and several other major brokerage brands under the same umbrella.

New York-based Compass has agreed to acquire rival Anywhere Real Estate in an all-stock transaction that will create a combined company with a total value of roughly $10 billion, including debt, the companies said Monday.

Shares in Anywhere Real Estate soared more than 48% in afternoon trading Monday. Compass shares slid about 16%.

Compass runs a platform for use by real estate agents in customer relationship management, marketing and other tasks. It also operates its namesake real estate brokerage and Christie’s International Real Estate.

Related Articles

A jury will look at whether Amazon tricked customers into joining Prime — and made it hard to leave

Disney World picks ambassadors for 2026, 2027

Seattle, a coffee haven, is watching java prices spike. Why? read more

NASA named 10 new astronaut candidates for its 24th class of astronauts Monday, including one person who has already been to space.

Anna Menon, 39, a SpaceX engineer from Houston, was one of the four crew on Jared Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn mission that launched from Kennedy Space Center in 2024 and was one of the six women and four men announced to join the astronaut corps.

The others were Ben Bailey, 38, of Charlottesville, Virginia; Lauren Edgar, 40, of Sammamish, Washington; Adam Fuhrmann, 35, of Leesburg, Virginia; Cameron Jones, 35, of Savanna, Illinois; Yuri Kubo, 40, of Columbus, Indiana; Rebecca Lawler, 38, of Little Elm, Texas; Imelda Muller, 34, of Copake Falls, New York; Erin Overcash, 34, of Goshen, Kentucky; and Katherine Spies, 43, of San Diego.

“We picked the best and brightest, the most skilled, the best looking, the best personalities to take these 10 spots, and again, you represent your country,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy during the ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “You are America’s best and brightest and we’re going to need American’s best and brightest because we have a bold exploration plan for the future.” read more

By The Associated Press

Chipmaker Nvidia will invest $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a partnership announced Monday that will add at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia AI data centers to ramp up the computing power for the owner of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.

Per the letter of intent signed by the companies, the first gigawatt of Nvidia systems will be deployed in the second half of 2026. Nvidia and OpenAI said they would be finalizing the details of the arrangement in the coming weeks.

“This partnership complements the deep work OpenAI and Nvidia are already doing with a broad network of collaborators, including Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank and Stargate partners, focused on building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure,” the companies said in a release.

The Nvidia-OpenAI partnership comes about 10 days after OpenAI said it had reached a new tentative agreement that will give Microsoft a $100 billion equity stake in its for-profit corporation. OpenAI is technically controlled by its nonprofit. read more