About The Instructor
French Brown offers clients more than fourteen years of experience practicing law and lobbying in the area of state and local taxation. French specializes in all Florida taxes including sales tax, corporate income tax, motor fuels tax, communications services tax, property tax, and documentary stamp tax.
French began his legal career at the Florida Department of Revenue, quickly rising to the position of Deputy Director of the Office of Technical Assistance and Dispute Resolution. Additionally, French served as the Department of Revenue's Legislative and Cabinet Affairs Director and staffed the 2012 Communications Services Tax Working Group. In this role, he worked directly with Legislators, longstanding legislative staff, and the Governor and Cabinet offices.
Over the last ten years, Mr. Brown has been deeply involved with most major tax legislation moving through the Florida Capitol. Through his representation of some of Florida's largest trade associations and taxpayers, French has directly worked on and advocated for tax legislation to benefit both companies and taxpayers.
During that time, Mr. Brown has passed dozens of pieces of tax legislation, which have saved his clients and Floridian's billions in reduced state and local taxes. This includes more than a billion dollars in corporate income tax refund paid in 2020 and 2022, which was a result of unintended state consequences of the Federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. French was also instrumental in Florida adopting remote seller and marketplace facilitator provisions after the Supreme Court's 2018 Wayfair decision.
In 2018, Mr. Brown served as counsel to the successful constitutional proposal to permanently preserve the State's annual ten-percent cap on commercial property tax increases, which passed by 66.5%.
He assists his clients with Florida tax planning and controversies before the Florida Department of Revenue and local Property Appraisers, while maintaining a professional and amicable relationship with those that he used to work next to at the agency.