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Every year the A State of Florida fails to collect more than 500-million dollars due from online sales. As Matt Horn reports – a boom in shopping at your finger tips may equal big problems for Florida’s future.

Florida retailers are relying on trusted customers to battle online retail giants who are not collecting sales tax.

“A lot of times people will come in and say, well they would rather buy it in person and see and touch and feel it rather than get it online,” said Katelin Haggerty, local retailer.

A loophole in Florida law allows retailers like Amazon to not collect sales tax – costing Florida at least a half a billion dollars a year. Instead, Floridians are required to fill out a form to pay sales taxes not collected. John Fleming with the Florida Retail Federation says with more people shopping online, there is less revenue to support schools and other services.

“I think where we have the issue are the pure e-commerce retailers. The ones who are not operating stores, the ones who are not investing in the state of Florida, the ones right now who are not hiring people in the state of Florida,” said Fleming.

In 2013 brick and mortar sales have increased by 4-percent over 2012. But, some areas of online are exploding.

Not collecting the tax shifts the burden for services to other forms of taxation.

“We can see now that those little problems of not collecting the sales tax are becoming big problems as e-commerce explodes in Florida,” said Fleming.

Between November and December its estimated Floridians spent upwards of 60-billion dollars. Nearly ten percent of that shopping was done online.

“I think some retailers were caught by surprise by just how much e-commerce has grown this year,” said Fleming.

It’s estimated only 4-thousand people fill out the sales tax forms annually.

Retailers are waiting for final numbers this holiday season, but say they are confident numbers will be higher compared to last year’s holiday shopping season.