Two line items show up on a non-admitted placement that don’t exist on an admitted policy: a surplus lines tax and a stamping fee. Both are real, both are the broker’s obligation to remit, and neither one comes out of the carrier’s premium.
The tax is 3%, and it’s the broker’s payment, not the carrier’s
California Insurance Code Section 1775.5 sets the surplus lines tax at 3% of gross premiums charged, less any return premiums, on business done under the broker’s surplus lines license. The statute frames this as a monthly payment obligation running on the broker’s own business, with an annual reconciliation — it isn’t something a carrier withholds or remits on the broker’s behalf.
The stamping fee is separate, and goes to the SLA, not the state
On top of the tax, the Surplus Line Association of California charges a 0.18% stamping fee, in effect since January 1, 2023, paid by the broker directly to the SLA rather than to the Department of Insurance. It funds the SLA’s own filing-review function — the stamping process that checks each placement for diligent-search compliance and carrier eligibility, covered separately — not the state tax itself.
What this actually means for a submission
Neither figure is optional or negotiable at the point of binding, and neither is a carrier line item a retail producer needs to chase separately — they’re part of what the surplus lines broker remits after the placement closes. What matters for the submission itself is that the premium a producer sees quoted is the number the tax and stamping fee get calculated against, not a number that already nets them out. A clean submission states the requested premium plainly; the tax and stamping fee math happens on Nomos’s side of the filing, not the retail producer’s.
