Palm Beach Gardens, FL Local Taxes & Fees: Business Tax Classification (2026)

Section 66-51 sets the baseline rule for classification overlap: whenever an occupation, business, profession, or privilege falls into more than one category on the business tax schedule in section 66-69, it has to comply with the business tax receipt requirements, and pay the tax, for each classification or privilege that applies rather than the single lowest-cost category. Section 66-52 then carves out one specific election. A person specifically classified elsewhere in chapter 66 who has a fixed or flat business tax receipt fee, keeps a regularly-established place of business in the city, keeps complete records of everything transacted, and whose business by its nature is capable of being classed as a merchant, may instead elect to classify as a retail or wholesale merchant. Making that election means paying the merchant's inventory-based rate under section 66-69(5) instead of the flat fee, but it also means the person's stock of merchandise for tax purposes covers everything the business transacts, not a narrower slice.

Section 66-52(b) excludes seven categories from qualifying for that merchant election regardless of how the business operates: abstract companies and abstractors, auditors, public accountants and bookkeepers, brokers, insurance adjusters, insurance agents, insurance companies and bonding companies, and professions generally. Those categories always pay under their own fixed classification in the fee schedule and cannot shift onto the merchant's inventory-based rate. Together, sections 66-51 and 66-52 close off two ways a multi-line business might otherwise try to minimize its city tax bill.