Sales tax on home services in all 50 states

Which states tax mowing, cleaning, pressure washing and pest control?

It depends on the state, and the split is wide. As of October 2026, four states have no general sales tax (Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon), and Alaska lets cities and boroughs tax on their own. Hawaii taxes the business through a general excise tax, while New Mexico and Delaware use gross receipts taxes. At the other end, states such as Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Washington name common home services as taxable.

The table below has one row for each of the 50 states. It comes from each state's own tax agency. Rules about a single service, such as whether snow removal is taxed, change from one state to the next, so the table points you to the agency page for the detail.

The states fall into three groups

Services taxed broadly. These states tax at least several everyday home services. Examples from the agencies: Connecticut lists landscaping, janitorial work, window cleaning, exterminating and pool cleaning. Iowa lists landscaping, lawn care, tree work and extermination. Kentucky lists landscaping, cleaning and pet care. Nebraska taxes house and exterior cleaning and pest control. Washington taxes landscaping, lawn maintenance and repair. South Dakota starts from the opposite rule: services are taxable unless an exemption covers them. West Virginia presumes all sales of goods and services are taxable unless the law clearly exempts them.

Some services taxed, others not. Kansas exempts labor on a residence and lists mowing and snow removal as not taxable, but taxes pesticide and fertilizer application on residential lawns. North Carolina taxes repair, maintenance and installation to real property but exempts cleaning, including window washing and power washing other than for a pool. Florida taxes nonresidential cleaning and nonresidential pest control. Maryland taxes cleaning of commercial and industrial buildings. Wisconsin taxes landscaping and lawn maintenance but treats plowing as separate.

Mostly goods only. In states such as Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Vermont and Wyoming, the labor on a mowing, cleaning or washing invoice is generally not taxed. Parts, products and materials you sell to the customer often are, and contractors who improve real property commonly pay tax on their materials when they buy them rather than charging customers.

Sales tax on home services in all 50 states

The Group column is a quick label, not a legal category. Open the agency link before you rely on a row. For each state, the state name links to our page on starting a business there.

How to read the table

Start with the Tax column. In most states the tax is a sales tax on the customer, which you collect and send in. In Hawaii, Delaware and New Mexico, and in Arizona under its transaction privilege tax, the tax falls on the business, and some of those states allow you to show it as a line on the invoice. Hawaii's Department of Taxation says the general excise tax is on the business but that you may visibly pass it on. New Mexico's rules let you pass the tax on if you either state it as its own line or note on the invoice that the New Mexico tax is included.

Then read the middle column as a prompt to look at your own services. If your row says lawn care is taxable, that usually means you collect tax on the whole mowing invoice. If it says labor is not taxed, check what you add to the invoice that the state treats as a product: mulch, a filter, a cleaning product left behind.

Finally, look for local taxes. Most of the rates in the agency sources are the state rate only. Texas adds up to 2 percent in local tax for a combined 8.25 percent, and the Comptroller's cleaning page tells you to collect state tax plus local tax. Louisiana, Alabama and Colorado all collect local taxes on top, and some home-rule cities in Colorado collect their own.

Traps that catch service businesses

Snow removal is treated differently from mowing

Snow is its own line in several states. Iowa's Department of Revenue says snow removal is not a taxable service. Kansas lists snow removal as not taxable under any circumstance. Minnesota's building cleaning guide lists snowplowing and removal as nontaxable, while Ohio's statute makes snow removal taxable once your yearly sales of it reach $5,000. New York treats snow removal as a taxable maintenance service, and New Jersey lists it as taxable. If you run lawn care in summer and plowing in winter, read the rule twice.

Bundled invoices can pull in the whole price

Florida's statute presumes a mixed invoice is taxable in full unless taxable and non-taxable charges are separately stated. Minnesota says the same for contracts that mix taxable and nontaxable services. Nebraska's pest notice says a lawn program that bundles grub control with fertilizer at one price is taxable in full unless the pest control charge is stated separately. Itemize your invoices.

Thresholds that look alike are different

Ohio's $5,000 is a yearly sales threshold per service category in the statute. Texas has a $5,000 rule too, but it only covers lawn care and landscaping by a self-employed person with no employees, partners or helpers, measured over the last four calendar quarters, and the tax starts on the first day of the next quarter after you pass it. Maid and janitorial work does not get the same break in Texas, where only a household employee's housekeeping is exempt.

Residential and commercial work can differ

Florida taxes only nonresidential cleaning and pest control under the paragraph the state cites. Maryland taxes cleaning of commercial and industrial buildings. Iowa taxes janitorial and building cleaning for nonresidential customers only. Connecticut taxes services to commercial and income-producing property but excludes owner-occupied homes with no more than three units from that category. If you do both house and storefront work, track them separately.

Capital improvement versus maintenance

New York and New Jersey tax maintenance but not capital improvements, and both ask you to get a certificate from the customer for the exempt work. New York uses Form ST-124 and New Jersey uses Form ST-8. New York's landscaper bulletin names planting a new lawn, retaining walls and planting shrubs and trees as capital improvements. New Jersey says landscaping stays taxable even when it is a capital improvement.

If you work in more than one state

Register where the work is done. Texas, Washington and Arkansas each tell you to collect tax for the place where the service happens or the customer receives it. A crew that crosses the Ohio and Pennsylvania line, or the Minnesota and Wisconsin line, can owe tax in one state for a mowing job and none in the next for the same work.

Keep a separate price list for each state if your rules differ, and make sure your estimating and invoicing software can add a tax line by job location. Georgia requires out-of-state contractors to post a performance tax bond, and West Virginia asks contractors based elsewhere to register and post a bond to cover use tax, so ask before you take your first job across a border. A customer relationship tool that stores the job address and tax status on every record makes this easier. See our custom CRM service for how that works.

What to check before you collect or skip tax

1. Open your state's agency page from the table and find the list of taxable services. Look for each service you sell by name.
2. Find out whether your customer type matters: house, rental, business, government or nonprofit.
3. Register for the account the agency names before your first taxable invoice. Fees listed in October 2026 include $12 per location in Arizona, $100 in Connecticut, $50 in Ohio and $50 in South Carolina, and Hawaii charges a one-time $20.
4. Show tax as its own line on invoices and online payments.
5. Check city and county rules, since local rates and, in a few places, local registration apply on top of the state's.
6. Write down the date you checked and revisit it each year.

For the general idea of how tax on services works, read sales tax on services explained. If you are pricing a trade, see how to price lawn mowing jobs and how to price pressure washing jobs. If you are choosing an entity before you register, see LLC fees by state.

What we checked and what we did not

We built each row from the state tax agency's own page and re-read many of them against the primary source in October 2026, including New Jersey's Sales Tax Guide, Kansas Publication KS-1525, Minnesota's building cleaning guide, Ohio Revised Code 5739.01, Iowa's taxable services page, Florida Statutes 212.05, Connecticut's services list, North Carolina G.S. 105-164.13, Washington's retail sales tax page, New York's landscaper bulletin, the Texas Comptroller's cleaning and landscaping pages, and Hawaii's general excise tax page. Rows we could not confirm on the agency page say so, and the agency link is where to go next. We did not state local rates, since they change. We publish no tax rates for your jobs and this page is not a substitute for the agency.

Frequently asked questions