{"id":106637,"date":"2026-01-05T19:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T19:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/106637\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T19:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T19:51:11","slug":"fiona-mcfarland-proposal-prepares-florida-for-life-without-the-penny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/106637\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiona McFarland proposal prepares Florida for life without the penny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarasota Republican Rep. Fiona McFarland<\/a> is pushing legislation that would require Florida retailers to round cash transactions to the nearest nickel now that the penny is no longer in production.<\/p>\n

HB 951<\/a> would amend state tax and consumer protection law to create a uniform rounding system for cash purchases when exact change cannot be made using 1-cent coins.<\/p>\n

The proposal does not eliminate the penny or require businesses to stop accepting it, but establishes rules for rounding now that the penny is no longer being minted.<\/p>\n

Under the bill, cash transactions ending in 1 or 2 cents would be rounded down to zero, while amounts ending in 3 or 4 cents would round up to 5 cents. Transactions ending in 6 or 7 cents would round down to 5 cents, and those ending in 8 or 9 cents would round up to the next 10 cents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Electronic transactions, including credit and debit card purchases, would not be affected. For mixed-tender purchases, rounding would only apply to the cash portion of the transaction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The bill specifies that sales tax must be calculated before rounding, meaning the amount of tax owed would not increase or decrease because of the adjustment.<\/p>\n

In addition, HB 951 would amend Florida\u2019s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act to clarify that rounding a consumer sale to the nearest nickel under these circumstances would not be considered a deceptive practice.<\/p>\n

The bill, filed Monday, would take effect upon becoming law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarasota Republican Rep. Fiona McFarland is pushing legislation that would require Florida retailers to round cash transactions to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[54782,26955,28,30,29,54783,54784,19532,8527],"class_list":["post-106637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-deceptive-and-unfair-trade-practices-act","tag-fiona-mcfarland","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-hb-951","tag-nickle","tag-penny","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}