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On September 30, Florida's minimum wage reaches $15 an hour, the last of the increases voters wrote into the constitution in 2020. If nobody in your company earns anywhere near that, the number will never touch your payroll. It will still be in the local paper for a week, on social media, and in the break room, and sometime in October a good employee making $24 an hour is going to bring it up.

Economists who studied 138 state minimum wage increases across nearly four decades found the raise does not stop at the floor. Wages rise for workers above it too, and those spillovers reach about three dollars above the new minimum, accounting for roughly forty percent of the total wage increase. At a $15 floor, that is the band up to about $18, and if you have anyone in that range you should plan on paying more for that work.

Above the band, the same research finds nothing. If your lowest rate is $22, the labor market is not repricing your jobs because the state floor moved, and nobody is about to outbid you for your foreman on the strength of a number he already clears by thirty dollars.

Those spillovers come mostly from employers choosing to preserve the gaps inside their own companies, not from the market forcing their hand. So, the pressure you are about to feel is internal rather than economic, and what you do about it is a decision rather than a cost you have been handed.

People evaluate their pay as a position, not as a number. When researchers told a randomly chosen group of University of California employees about a website listing what their colleagues earned, those who found themselves below the median for their unit reported lower satisfaction with their pay and their jobs, and were more likely to say they were looking for other work. The ones above the median reported no change. What moved people was rank, not dollars.

A statewide wage story works the same way on a smaller scale. It puts a number in the air, and everyone in the building measures the distance between that number and their own. Your $24 employee knows that $15 does not apply to him. He will still notice that the gap between what the state requires and what he earns is narrower than it was five years ago, and once he has noticed, he is likely to say something.

The worst version is answering six people six different ways over three weeks, because the sixth has already heard what you told the first five. Pick your position now and give everyone the same one.

You have three honest positions available. Holding rates where they are is defensible if you sit above the spillover band and can say plainly what your pay is based on. Adjusting the bottom of your own scale to keep the gaps you meant to have is what the research says most employers quietly do. Moving your review date up buys you time and costs nothing so long as you hold the review. What you cannot do is decide in the moment, in a hallway, with one person watching your face.

If you are going to move anything, move it before anyone asks. A raise handed out in response to a request reads as a negotiation won, and it teaches the whole company how to get one.

Do not argue about the minimum wage. You will lose that argument, not because you are wrong but because it was never the subject.

Ask what prompted the question and then answer with your own numbers instead of the State's. What this job pays here, how you arrived at it, when it gets reviewed, and the two or three specific things that would move it. An owner who can say that the rate is reviewed every January, that it is set against what this work pays in this market, and that certification and running your own crew are what move it, has ended the conversation. The owner who explains that the minimum wage is irrelevant to a $24 job has started a different one. Our earlier piece, What to Do When a Key Employee Gives Notice, is what this conversation becomes when it goes unanswered.

Two places. If you employ tipped workers, the required cash wage goes to $11.98 on the same date, because the constitution freezes the tip credit at $3.02 and every dollar the floor rises pushes the cash wage up with it. That is a compliance obligation, not a judgment call, and cash plus tips still has to reach the full minimum every workweek.

The second is the calendar, and it works in your favor. After this increase the annual inflation adjustments begin, and the first one is calculated in September 2027 to take effect the following January. So, $15 is the floor from this September through the end of 2027. Whatever scale you set in the next few weeks stays accurate longer than any you have set since 2021, which is reason enough to set it deliberately rather than defend it one conversation at a time. If moving your rates means finding the money somewhere, our earlier piece, A Proven Method to Analyze and Cut Expenses, is the line-by-line version of that search.

September 30 changes a number that is not yours. The conversation it starts is yours to deal with, and it is easier to address in September than October.

The Co. Letter is not your attorney. Wage and hour obligations carry both state and federal components, and you should confirm how they apply to your business with your own counsel or payroll professional.

Question:

I put my real estate in separate LLCs. I am in Florida and have used Florida LLCs exclusively but I keep hearing great (maybe hyped) claims about Wyoming. Should I try one for my next Florida real estate project?

Answer:

Thanks for writing in. You did not say what the next project is, so we are reading it as a Florida property that will earn rent, and we are assuming the Wyoming entity would be an LLC rather than a corporation.

So, yes, you can do it, and Wyoming is cheaper and faster. Filing online there is approved the same day, and the yearly report runs $60 against Florida's $138.75. For a property sitting in Florida, we still do not think it pays.

The cost pitch stops at formation. Florida treats the ownership of income-producing real property here as doing business in the state, so a Wyoming LLC that buys your next rental has to register in Florida anyway. Holding a vacant lot may not trigger that; collecting rent does. You would pay Wyoming to form the company, pay it again every year, and pay an agent there, then do the same three things in Florida. Two states, two sets of deadlines, and Florida adds $400 to a late report without waiving it. Our earlier piece, Should You Be The Registered Agent Of Your LLC?, covers whether you should carry one of those two agent roles yourself.

Skipping the Florida registration costs more than the fees. An out-of-state LLC doing business here without registering cannot maintain an action in a Florida court. Your deed and your lease stay good; what you lose is the courthouse. So the tenant stops paying, you go to file the eviction, and you learn you have to register first, pay the skipped fees, and answer for a penalty of $500 to $1,000 for each year, or part of one, because you went without filing.

The Wyoming filing does not move the courthouse either. Any case over title to or possession of Florida real estate has to be filed in the county where the land sits, county court for an eviction and circuit court for a dispute over title. A claim by a tenant or guest hurt on the property lands in Florida as well.

The two benefits you are likely hearing in Wyoming's favor are privacy and asset protection. Wyoming's privacy is real, since its yearly report keeps members and managers off the public record, and it does not survive registration in Florida. Florida wants the name, address, and title of at least one manager or managing member, on a record anyone can search from a phone. Either way, the deed is public.

The asset protection claim is the charging order, which limits what a creditor with a judgment against you personally can reach inside the company. Wyoming's version is stronger than Florida's, and the gap is widest when you are the only member. It answers the wrong risk. A fire, a fall, or a flood is a claim against the property and its insurance, not against your membership interest, and how much of Wyoming's rule a Florida judge would apply is unsettled. You would be paying to find out.

For the full state-by-state comparison, including name availability, our earlier piece, The Wild West LLC Standoff Between Wyoming and Nevada...And Where Texas and Florida Stand, lays it out.

Our answer is to keep your Florida property in Florida LLCs, and to put what the second state would have cost you into the liability coverage that responds when something goes wrong.

The Co. Letter is not your attorney.

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