CopyCited 1 times | Published | Florida 1st District Court of Appeal | 2015 WL 46515
...Because deductions under this
subsection are available to insurance carriers, s.
624.5091
does not limit such deductions in any manner.
(Boldface omitted.) Also applicable and pertinent to determination of a carrier’s
assessments for these trust funds is section
624.5094, Florida Statutes (2008),
which provides:
Casualty insurance premiums.—Notwithstanding
any statutory provision to the contrary, for the purposes
of calculating the annual assessments for the Special
Disability Trust Fund under s....
...unadopted rules were the basis of the notice of intent to deny. Amerisure
contended the Department treated “credit balances” accrued in 2009 as “excess
credits,” which had to be forfeited at the end of the calendar year, and argued
section 624.5094 did “not authorize the Department to eliminate accrued credits”
or “support the Department’s interpretation that no credit can be accrued during a
year when no monies are due and paid into the fund(s).”...
...ess credits and how they are to be
treated.” The statute makes no mention of “credits,” excess or otherwise. Indeed,
the ALJ concluded that the Department’s elimination of the 2009 “credits” was
based on an erroneous interpretation of section 624.5094 on grounds that the
provision “does not address credits in any way, and certainly does not mandate that
credits be eliminated should a carrier have four quarters in a year where negative...
...Division to create free-standing tax credits redeemable from the State Treasury for
the benefit of a private insurance carrier that paid nothing [for the year 2009] in
assessments to the Division.” The final order concluded instead:
Section 624.5094 makes clear that, for annual assessment
purposes, all statutory deductions from a carrier’s “net”
premium base must be taken in the assessment year in
which they occur “regardless of the po...
.... No action by the Department “eliminates” a
carrier’s “credits” against its assessment liability for
dividends paid and premiums returned when its annual
assessment is finalized at [or below] zero. Section
624.5094, Florida Statutes, by operation of law,
forecloses a carrier’s ability to apply its “excess credits”
– that is, the carrier’s having made more expenditures for
dividends a...
...owes to the State.
Regarding the purportedly dispositive, unadopted rule, the Department again
emphasized that there was no statutory authority for calculating “credits” on the
basis asserted by Amerisure, given the plain meaning of section 624.5094:
“Simply put, an insurer that has not paid an assessment is not entitled to a refund of
a portion of that ‘non-assessment’ just because it has experienced a ‘negative net
premium’ for an entire assessment year....
...on premiums which were
subsequently returned to policyholders, Amerisure has not demonstrated that it
paid more in assessments than the law requires.
The applicable statutory provisions call for calculating assessments one year
at a time. Section 624.5094 only authorizes deductions or offsets “against the
current year’s net premium” for dividends or premium refunds “in the same
calendar year” or “current year” in calculating “that year’s assessment” –
“regar...
...fund may offset from its total of premiums collected
during the quarter all amounts actually paid or credited to
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statute to the information Amerisure reported. As the Department said in its final
order, pursuant to section 624.5094, “annual assessments are, indeed, annual and
are the product of a carrier’s premium experience for that year, and that year only.
The ALJ fails to accord any meaning to the statutory phrase ‘against the current
year’s net premium for that year’s assessment’ . . . . No action by the Department
‘eliminates’ a carrier’s ‘credits’ against its assessment liability for dividends paid
and premiums returned when its annual assessment is finalized at zero. Section
624.5094, Florida Statutes, by operation of law, forecloses a carrier’s ability to
policyholders for dividends and returned premiums
during the quarter regardless of the calendar year the
policies incepted for which the dividends or returned
premiums apply....
...end of the three-year window, any unused portion of an overpayment would no
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certain rights while adversely affecting others, or otherwise have the direct and
consistent effect of law, or add anything whatsoever to the plain meaning of
section 624.5094....
...on is
not a simple application of the law to the information provided, because no statute
referenced by the Department makes any mention of excess credits and how they
are to be treated.” The fundamental problem with the ALJ’s conclusion is that
section 624.5094 precludes carrying forward negative net premium from one
calendar year to a subsequent calendar year, thereby precluding the “credits” at
issue in the first place.
The fact that “credit” calculations based on Amerisure...
...information from one quarter to the next, a result of the fact that the assessments at
issue are actually annual assessments even though the statutes set forth quarterly
reporting requirements. It is therefore both irrelevant and completely
understandable that nothing in section 624.5094 “mandates that credits be
eliminated under any circumstances.”
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place upon the statute an interpretation that is not readily apparent from its literal
reading, nor in and of itself p...
...e
without requiring an agency to go through rulemaking.’” Id. (quoting St. Francis
Hosp., Inc. v. Dep’t of Health & Rehabilitative Servs.,
553 So. 2d 1351, 1354 (Fla.
1st DCA 1989)).
The Department’s construction and application of section
624.5094 in the
present case is consistent with and required by the statute....
