After years of contemplating whether to do away with a fee that every business in Seminole County is required to pay annually — whether it’s a home-based operation or a dentist office or a large retail store — commissioners on Tuesday narrowly voted to keep it after a heated discussion.

“This is a revenue that we can use for many things,” Commissioner Lee Constantine said in favor of keeping the fee. “After having to look at where we can get additional revenues and increasing the taxes to the citizens [last year], I feel uncomfortable now in giving a tax reduction” to businesses.

Constantine joined commission Chair Andria Herr and Commissioner Bob Dallari in keeping the fee. Commissioners Amy Lockhart and Jay Zembower, who are both running for re-election this year, voiced strong support to do away with the fee.

Known as “business tax receipts” or BTRs, these occupational license fees can vary from $25 to $45 annually depending on the kind of business. Last year, the county collected about $310,000.

Opponents have said it’s yet another expense for businesses, especially after the county raised property taxes for the first time in 16 years by 10.2% last summer. They also have long argued the county doesn’t strictly enforce collection of the fees and that it’s an expensive use of county manpower to process the applications.

County Attorney Kate Latorre said some Florida counties levy late fees on businesses that do not keep their BTRs up to date. But Seminole County Tax Collector J.R. Kroll — whose office is responsible for processing the fees — said Seminole’s enforcement of BTRs is lax.

“The BTRs are almost an honor system,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting. “If they don’t pay, we ask them again to pay. …But there is not an army of people that we send out to collect this money. And it’s such a small amount of money to collect. So paying someone to go out and knock on doors would be kind of ridiculous.”

Zembower, an Altamonte Springs business owner who has strongly advocated for doing away with the fees, said the county would be “hard pressed to convince me that we’re collecting $310,000 without spending probably pretty close to that number” in processing payments.

“We don’t even have the manpower to even go door-to-door to figure it out,” Zembower said. “You don’t even have the right to go to a home-based business and demand that they prove whether they are, or are not, a business.”

Lockhart said eliminating the fee would send a “significant signal” that the county is willing to support home-based and small businesses.

“We just raised taxes,” she said. “We’re looking for ways to minimize the effects of that decision.”

County officials could not say how many businesses are not paying the fee. Each of Seminole’s seven cities also have a separate “business tax receipt” fee. So a business within a city is required to pay the municipal and county BTR fees.

The $310,000 in business tax receipts collected by the county last year was a precipitous drop from 2024, when the fees brought in $409,456. The county reached its peak in collections over the last ten years at $486,945 in 2016.

County officials say the fee provides valuable data and other information for Seminole’s economic development efforts — including, for example, how many engineering, accounting, medical, restaurants and financial businesses there are and where they are located.

“It tells us when we have a new business coming into the county and when a business leaves the county,” said Tricia Johnson, Seminole’s deputy county manager. The data “also can be beneficial for public safety…especially for outreach pre- and post-hurricanes, for example.”

Three bills have been introduced in the Florida Legislature this session that would do away with BTRs. But those bills have stalled, Johnson said.

Calling it a “premature move,” Constantine suggested the county wait until after the Legislature ends its session in March to revisit the issue.

Herr said many businesses rely on the BTR data before deciding whether to relocate or open up shop in the county. And he added the county would be “burdened” with coming up with that data if the BTR was eliminated.

“I do have a concern for the loss of data,” Herr said.