A Florida circuit court held for the Department of Revenue in a dispute over Florida’s apportionment formula applicable to companies providing transportation services in the state. Florida apportions income of transportation companies by multiplying the taxpayer’s income by a fraction, the numerator of which is “revenue miles in [Florida]” and the denominator of which is “revenue miles everywhere.” Florida defines the phrase “revenue miles in [Florida]” to include all miles traversed within Florida’s geographic borders and an area of ocean contiguous to Florida’s coastline.
An airline asserted that the Florida apportionment statute was unconstitutional because it violated the “internal consistency” test of the Dormant Commerce Clause. The airline argued that the statute was not internally consistent because it used air miles flown both over Florida’s landmass and over the ocean contiguous to Florida’s coastline to calculate the share of the airline’s income attributable to Florida. The court disagreed with the airline, holding that Florida’s statute was internally consistent because “if a hypothetical state were to directly import Florida’s geographical description minus Florida’s landmass, its statute would still not be ‘identical’ to Florida’s structure, because Florida’s apportionment structure is related to its own land mass by contiguity.”
JetBlue Airways Corp. v. Dep’t of Revenue, No. 2024CA1177 (Fla. Cir. Ct. Sept. 1, 2025).