The 20-day rule for a visiting boat

Twenty days, and what starts them

The exemption is short and the trap is in the first clause. A boat may remain in Florida for a period not to exceed a total of 20 days in any calendar year — calculated from the date of first dockage or slippage at a facility registered with the department that rents dockage or slippage space in this state.

So the clock is not started by crossing the state line and not by picking up a mooring: it starts at the first paid berth at a registered facility. And it is a total over a calendar year, not a single visit.

The pause

The 20 days are tolled while the boat is physically in the care, custody and control of a repair facility, which is what lets a yard period sit outside the count. There is one limit on that: the period may be tolled only once within a calendar year. Where a boat was brought into the state within 6 months after the date of its purchase, that 6-month period is tolled as well.

What is not in the paragraph

Whether the day of arrival is itself the first of the twenty. The text calculates the days “from the date of first dockage or slippage” and stops there. We would rather leave that open than answer it for you.

Everything else about the tax — rates, caps, what happens when a boat has been used elsewhere first — is in sections this page does not carry. This is not tax advice; it is one paragraph, quoted with its source, so you can take the right question to someone who can answer it.