How to File the Florida Employer’s Quarterly Report RT-6

If you’re a Florida employer with an active reemployment tax account, you file Form RT-6 with the Florida Department of Revenue once per quarter, by the last day of the month following the close of that quarter. The report lists total gross wages, calculates taxable wages (the first $7,000 paid to each employee per calendar year), and pays the tax at your assigned rate. Most employers are required to file electronically through the FDOR’s File and Pay portal, and the same portal handles both the report and the payment.¹

The mechanics are straightforward once you know which wage figure goes where and how the deadlines interact with the penalty structure. What follows is the working sequence.

What You Need Before You Start

You need your reemployment tax account number, issued by the FDOR when you registered through the Florida Business Tax Application or paper Form DR-1.² You also need your current tax rate. New employers file at 2.7% for their first 10 quarters. After that, the FDOR assigns an experience-rated rate anywhere from 0.1% to 5.4%, mailed to you each year and applied to all four quarters of that calendar year.³

From payroll, pull two things for the quarter:

Total Gross Wages. All remuneration you paid during the quarter: salaries, hourly pay, commissions, bonuses, tips, and the cash value of non-cash compensation. Each employer reports only its own payroll unless it operates as an employee leasing company or an approved common paymaster.¹
Taxable Wages. The portion of gross wages that’s actually taxed: the first $7,000 paid to each employee per calendar year. Once an employee’s year-to-date wages cross $7,000, you stop adding their pay into the taxable column, but you keep including it in gross wages.⁴

Expect taxable wages to shrink over the year. By Q3 and Q4, most employees have already cleared the cap, so gross wages and taxable wages diverge sharply.

You also need a line-by-line employee schedule: each worker’s name, Social Security number, and wages paid during the quarter. The individual amounts must sum to the total gross wages shown on the summary portion of the form. A mismatch counts as an erroneous report and carries its own penalty.

Filing the Report

Florida requires electronic filing if you employed 10 or more people in any quarter during the most recent state fiscal year.⁵ Most employers meet that threshold. Even if you’re under it, the FDOR’s online portal is faster and gives you an immediate confirmation number, which is your proof of timely submission. Save it.¹

Log in to the FDOR File and Pay portal with your reemployment tax account number. Enter total gross wages, taxable wages, and the employee wage detail. The portal calculates the tax based on your assigned rate. Payment goes through the same session by ACH debit or ACH credit.

Employers below the 10-employee threshold may still file a paper RT-6. If you’re required to file electronically and submit paper instead, the penalty is $25 per report plus $1 for each employee listed, up to $300.¹

Quarterly Due Dates

Each RT-6 and its accompanying payment share the same deadline: the last day of the month following the quarter’s close.²

Q1 (January–March): April 30
Q2 (April–June): July 31
Q3 (July–September): October 31
Q4 (October–December): January 31 of the following year

There’s no extension process for the RT-6 like the one available for income tax returns. If a due date falls on a weekend or holiday, it shifts to the next business day.

Calculating the Tax

Your tax for the quarter equals your assigned rate times your total taxable wages. A new employer at 2.7% with $50,000 in taxable wages owes $50,000 × 0.027 = $1,350.

Established employers with a clean benefit history can pay as little as 0.1% ($7 per capped employee). The statutory maximum is 5.4%, or $378 per capped employee.⁴ Your rate reflects your benefit ratio: how much former employees have drawn in reemployment benefits charged to your account, measured against your taxable payroll over a three-year period ending the prior June 30.⁶

Penalties If You Miss a Deadline or Get the Numbers Wrong

Florida’s penalties stack in layers, so a single late quarter can produce several separate charges at once.

Late filing. A delinquent RT-6 costs $25 for each 30-day period (or fraction of one) that it remains unfiled.⁷ The FDOR can waive it for good cause, but that bar is high.

Late payment. Unpaid tax accrues interest from the due date until the FDOR receives the balance plus accrued interest. Florida updates the interest rate on January 1 and July 1 each year, and the statute caps it at 1% per month. For the first half of 2026, the rate is 11% annually.⁸⁷

Erroneous or incomplete reports. Missing wage data, wrong or missing Social Security numbers, or a gross-wages figure that doesn’t reconcile with the employee schedule triggers a penalty of $50 or 10% of the tax due, whichever is greater, up to $300 per report.⁷ This is added on top of any late-filing penalty and interest. One narrow exception: if an employee gave you incorrect personal information and you had no reason to know, the report isn’t treated as erroneous.

Fixing an Error After Filing

Don’t correct a prior quarter’s mistake on your next RT-6. Florida uses a separate form, the Correction to Employer’s Quarterly Report (RT-8A). Electronic filers submit the RT-8A through the File and Pay portal. Paper filers download it from the FDOR website.⁹

Common corrections include fixing a Social Security number, adjusting an individual employee’s wages, or reconciling a gross-wages total to the employee detail. File the correction promptly. Uncorrected errors can affect benefit charges to your account and, over time, your experience-rated tax rate.

Why Filing On Time Protects Your Federal Credit

The most expensive consequence of a late RT-6 isn’t the state penalty. It’s the loss of your federal unemployment (FUTA) credit. The base FUTA rate is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages. Employers who pay their state unemployment tax in full and by the Form 940 deadline receive a credit of up to 5.4%, dropping the effective FUTA rate to 0.6%.¹⁰

Paying Florida reemployment tax late costs you part or all of that credit. On a workforce of 50 employees who each earn above $7,000, the full 5.4% credit is worth $18,900. Florida is not currently a FUTA credit reduction state, so employers here receive the full credit as long as state taxes are paid on time.

Quarters With No Wages, and Closing the Account

Once you’re registered and liable, you must file the RT-6 every quarter until the account is formally closed, even if you paid no wages during the quarter.⁹ A zero-wage return keeps you clear of the late-filing penalty. Skipping the quarter doesn’t.

If your business closes or your workforce drops below the liability threshold, apply to terminate the account with Form RTS-5. The application must be received by April 30 of the year for which you’re requesting termination. Until the FDOR closes the account, keep filing. If you later hire enough workers to become liable again, the FDOR treats you as a new employer and assigns the 2.7% initial rate regardless of your prior experience-rated rate.¹¹

Recordkeeping

Keep payroll records for five calendar years, which is Florida’s requirement and also satisfies the IRS’s four-year federal window.¹²¹³ Retain a copy of each filed RT-6, the supporting employee wage detail, confirmation numbers from electronic submissions, and any RT-8A corrections. If the FDOR audits or your rate calculation is ever questioned, those files are what you’ll be working from.

1
Florida Department of Revenue. How to File and Pay Reemployment Tax
2
Florida Department of Revenue. Florida Reemployment Tax
3
Florida Department of Revenue. Reemployment Tax Rate Information
4
FloridaJobs.org. Florida Reemployment Tax – Employers
5
Florida Department of Revenue. Electronic File and Pay Requirements
6
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 443.131 – Contributions
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The 2025 Florida Statutes. Florida Statutes 443.141 – Collection of Contributions and Reimbursements
8
Florida Department of Revenue. Tax and Interest Rates
9
Florida Department of Revenue. Employer’s Quarterly Report (RT-6) Instructions
10
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 759 – Form 940 FUTA Tax Return
11
Florida Department of Revenue. Application to Terminate Reemployment Tax Account (RTS-5)
12
Florida Department of Revenue. Employer Guide to Reemployment Tax
13
Internal Revenue Service. Employment Tax Recordkeeping