National Clothesline

A class action suit filed in Florida has again raised the issue of trying to recoup environmental costs with a line-item on drycleaning tickets.

Add-on charges for environmental costs have been the subject of legal actions in other industries, but this appears to be the first time that drycleaners have been singled out. The lawsuit alleges that a 6 percent “environmental tax” charged by some Florida drycleaners violates Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and imposes an illegal environmental tax on customers.

Drycleaners have been warned in the past to be careful how they describe and apply the fees if they choose to use them. The lawsuit prompted Fred McCormack, an attorney for the Florida Drycleaners Coalition, to issue another warning in the form of a letter to coalition members.

Florida law does not prohibit adding an environmental surcharge or fee, McCormack said, but “if a drycleaner makes any representation of any kind whatsoever of the cost to a customer of processing a garment and then adds and environmental fee, or any other kind of fee unauthorized by statues, to that amount without prior disclosure, she or he risks a lawsuit, either by private plaintiffs or the government, under the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.”

“If a drycleaner advertises — in the newspaper, through flyers or circulars or even just on a price board on display in the counter area — that processing a man’s suit costs $10 and then adds in an environmental fee when the customer pays, the drycleaner is at risk unless notice of the fee was given up front. The bottom line is you’ve got to tell people they’re expected to pay an extra fee along with the cost of cleaning their suit,” McCormack said.

McCormack suggested that an environmental fee should be no more than two or three percent of the total charge for services.

Under no circumstances, he stressed, should an environmental fee be called an “environmental tax.” Funds collected from a purchaser under the representation that they are state-authorized taxes automatically become state funds. If a drycleaner keeps the money, the state considers it stolen and can bring felony charges, he said.

Florida drycleaners pay both a gross receipts tax and a perc surcharge to support the state’s environmental clean-up fund. But that is a different issue from environmental fees or surcharges, McCormack said. Drycleaners can include in the total retail charge all or part of the gross receipts or perc taxes, he said, but must disclose on the receipt the exact amount of each tax charged and include on the receipt a statement that says “imposition of the tax was requested by the Florida Dry Cleaners Coalition.”