Get the Florida comp exemption that holds: Sunbiz first, ownership second, DWC-250 third

A construction workers compensation exemption in Florida costs $50 and lasts two years. That is $25 a year to keep yourself off the payroll count. Almost nobody loses this because of the fee. They lose it because they did the three filings in the wrong order, or because something upstream of the certificate quietly stopped being true.

Here is what the wrong order costs. Under s.440.107(7)(d)1 the department assesses a penalty of two times the premium you avoided, with a $1,000 floor, and the instrument that arrives with it is a stop-work order. Say you are four people on a $180,000 remodel with six weeks left. A two week stand-down while you buy a policy and settle the penalty is forty man-days you have already sold. Keep working through the order instead and s.440.107(7)(c) charges $1,000 per day, so those same fourteen days cost $14,000 before anyone opens the premium calculation. The $50 filing was never the expensive part.

By the end of this page you will have an entity form that can legally hold an exemption, an ownership percentage recorded on Sunbiz, a filed DWC-250 with a certificate number on it, a renewal date twenty four months out sitting on your business file, and a written rule for every helper you pay. Every figure below names the section of the 2025 Florida Statutes it comes from.

Settle the entity question first, because a sole proprietor cannot exempt at all

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that cannot be patched later.

In Florida construction, the exemption belongs to corporate officers and LLC members. A sole proprietor or a partner working in construction is treated as an employee under Chapter 440 and cannot elect out. There is no form for it. If you are trading as yourself with a fictitious name, the answer to "how do I get exempt" is not a filing, it is an incorporation.

Contractors have been running into this exact wall since the day the rule landed. A trim carpenter in northwest Florida, posting on the Fine Homebuilding forum the week the change was announced:

"I am a trim carpenter, only needed a business license, general liability and comp. exempt. Now I must incorporate, can't be a sole propreitor in construction."

catfish, on the Fine Homebuilding forum

Same thread, another Florida builder on what the alternative actually prices at when the exemption is not in place:

"The exemption allowed the owner or 3 corporate officers to opt out of insuring themselves...My carrier screwed up last year and billed me for comp for myself. The bill was $11,600."

florida, on the Fine Homebuilding forum

That is the real spread on this decision: a $50 filing on one side, a premium line for your own labor on the other.

Formation is cheap and fast. A Florida LLC is $125 filed online, which is $100 for the articles plus the $25 registered agent designation. A profit corporation is $70, being $35 for the articles plus the mandatory $35 registered agent filing. Either one is filed at Sunbiz and approved in days, and picking between them is covered in starting a contracting business in Florida.

Record the ownership on Sunbiz before you touch the DWC-250

The Division of Workers' Compensation checks your claim against the Division of Corporations record. That is the whole reason the order matters.

Three things have to be true on the state's side before the exemption application can succeed, and all three live at Sunbiz rather than at the Department of Financial Services:

1. The entity is registered and listed as active with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations.
2. You are listed as an officer of the corporation, or a member of the LLC, in those records.
3. You attest to a minimum of 10 percent ownership of that corporation or LLC.

If you formed the LLC last week and never added the second member to the record, the application is attesting to something the state's own file does not show. Fix the Sunbiz record first, because the amendment takes a day. An exemption filed against a record that contradicts it gets found during a premium audit or an investigator's site visit in Orange or Hillsborough County, which is two years later and at the worst possible moment.

Note the cap while you are here: no more than three officers of a corporation, or of any group of affiliated corporations including LLCs, may elect to be exempt. Three is the ceiling for the whole affiliated group, not three per company. If you and two partners are all taking exemptions, that is the group used up, and person number four goes on a policy.

File the DWC-250 electronically, and ignore the 2008 paper form

There is a 01/2008 paper DWC-250 PDF still circulating on form-download sites and in trade groups. It is moot, and filing it wastes a week.

Section 440.05(3) requires the notice of election to be exempt to be submitted electronically to the department, and it requires you to certify that you have completed the department's online workers compensation coverage and compliance tutorial. The tutorial is part of the filing, not an optional extra, and the application also carries the percentage of ownership evidencing the ownership this chapter requires, which is the 10 percent you just made sure Sunbiz agrees with.

The fee is $50 with each request for a construction industry certificate of election to be exempt, and the same $50 with each renewal. That is s.440.05(8)(a). Three officers exempting means 3 x $50 = $150 every two years, or $75 a year for the whole management team.

Count two years from the issue date, not from the renewal notice

Section 440.05(6) is unusually precise about this. A certificate is valid for two years after the effective date stated on it, and it expires at midnight, two years from its issue date. There is no grace period written into that sentence and no reinstatement that reaches backwards. A job worked on the far side of that midnight was worked with an officer who was not exempt and not covered.

So the date you need is the issue date printed on the certificate, and the date you act on is twenty four months later. The arithmetic is not the hard part. Two years is longer than anyone's memory, and the certificate is a PDF sitting in an email from a project that finished eighteen months ago.

Put the issue date somewhere that will still be there in the twenty third month. On AEC Stack that is a business profile question: answer that you hold a Florida workers compensation exemption, enter the date it was issued, and the fl_wc_exemption_renewal clock computes a twenty four month offset from that credential date and shows s.440.05(6) as the reason it exists. Three officers, three issue dates, three clocks.

Keep the entity active or the certificate quietly stops meaning anything

This is the trap that gets good operators, because nothing about it announces itself.

Section 440.05(12) makes a certificate subject to revocation if, at any time after the notice is filed or the certificate is issued, the person named on it no longer meets the requirements. Active entity status is one of those requirements. So the chain runs backwards as easily as forwards: dissolve the entity and the certificate stops holding, whether or not anyone reissues a piece of paper.

The usual route to a dissolved entity is not a decision. It is a missed Sunbiz annual report. That report is due May 1. The late fee is $400, it cannot be waived, and administrative dissolution follows on the fourth Friday of September. Do the addition: a $138.75 report you forgot becomes $538.75 in May, and by late September it has taken your exemptions, and potentially your standing to contract under the entity, with it. That is the most expensive calendar reminder in Florida construction.

This is why the annual report and the exemption are wired together on the platform rather than filed as two unrelated dates. The May 1 clock carries the consequence text on its face: a $400 late fee that cannot be waived, then administrative dissolution on the fourth Friday of September, which also kills the construction workers comp exemption.

Stop paying helpers on a 1099 and calling it subcontracting

Two numbers decide this, and the second one is the one people get wrong.

Construction triggers mandatory coverage at one employee. The four-employee threshold everybody quotes belongs to non-construction employers. If you have a single person on the job who is not you and not validly exempt, the coverage requirement is live.

And s.440.02(18)(c) closes the door people try to walk through. In construction, a person you pay on a 1099 is your employee unless they hold their own entity plus their own exemption, or their own coverage. Labeling does not de-employ anyone. A helper you call an independent contractor, who has no LLC and no certificate, is an employee for Chapter 440, and you are an uninsured construction employer from his first hour on site.

When you are the one hiring subs, the duty runs the other way and it is written down: s.440.10(1)(c) requires a contractor to require a subcontractor to provide evidence of workers compensation insurance, and s.440.10(1)(b) makes you the statutory employer on sublet work when they do not have it. In practice that means two hits at once, the injured worker's benefits and the sub's payroll added to your own premium audit. Verify each sub in the Division's Proof of Coverage database before their first day, keep the printout with the subcontract, and re-verify on the certificate expiry rather than on trust. The people you hire are on their own two year clock, and their midnight is not the same as yours.

What it costs

There is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5% of each invoice processed through AEC Stack, collected on payment due dates.

Everything else on this page is a government fee, and the whole stack is smaller than a single week of the wrong outcome:

When you pick an entity form during registration, the ordering trap is on screen at the point of the decision rather than after it. The Florida LLC record carries the chain in order: entity active on Sunbiz, then the member recorded at 10% or more, then the DWC-250 at $50 with a maximum of three, and a dissolved entity invalidating the lot. The sole proprietorship record carries the plainer version, which is that a construction sole proprietor cannot exempt at all.

Open your business profile at start your business and answer one question: do you hold a Florida workers compensation exemption, and what date was it issued. If the certificate is in an email you cannot find, that is the answer to a different question, and it is worth finding out now rather than on the Tuesday an investigator walks your site.

<!-- CAPTURE LATER: the Florida business profile with holds_wc_exemption answered yes and fl_wc_exemption_issued_on entered, showing the fl_wc_exemption_renewal clock resolved to a date 24 months out with the s.440.05(6) reference visible. Blocked in this wave: the demo tenant is Ontario. -->