Connecticut
In Connecticut, cleaning is a taxable service whether the job is a house or an office building, so sales tax belongs on the residential and commercial sides of your books alike. The state uses the ABC test to decide whether your cleaners count as employees for unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage is $16.94 an hour for 2026, rising to $17.48 on January 1, 2027.
A lot of cleaning owners assume house cleaning sits outside sales tax. Connecticut doesn't work that way: its regulation on janitorial services covers dwellings as well as commercial buildings, and that one rule shapes how I set up the books for a Connecticut cleaning company. Below I walk through sales tax, the employee or subcontractor question, payroll registration with the two state agencies, the minimum wage, and what all of it means for the numbers you look at each month.
Residential cleaning is taxable in Connecticut, and so is commercial cleaning. Janitorial work is on the state's list of taxable services, and the regulation that defines it applies whether or not the property is commercial. The exclusions are narrow, and I lay them out on the Connecticut sales tax on cleaning page along with the rules behind them.
Source: Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, Statutory Provisions for Sales of Taxable Services
How that tax gets reported on a return is a different question. I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA, so filing questions go to your CPA.
For unemployment insurance, Connecticut decides whether a worker is an employee using the ABC test, found in Conn. Gen. Stat. 31-222(a)(1)(B)(ii). The Connecticut Department of Labor publishes its own explanation of the employer-employee relationship for unemployment taxes, linked below. In the books, a W-2 employee and a 1099 subcontractor land in completely different places, which I covered in 1099 subcontractors vs. W-2 employees.
Source: Connecticut General Assembly, Conn. Gen. Stat. Chapter 567, Sec. 31-222
Whether a specific person on your crew is an employee under that test is a legal call. Take it to your CPA or an employment attorney.
Connecticut taxes wages, and payroll for a cleaning company with crews involves two state agencies. State income tax withholding is run by the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services (DRS), and registration happens through the DRS online services portal. Unemployment insurance is run by the Connecticut Department of Labor (CTDOL), and employer registration starts at CTDOL's unemployment tax login page.
Source: Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, New Employer Information
Source: Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, 2026 Withholding Tax Information (2026)
I record what each payroll run produces. The filings themselves belong to your payroll provider and your CPA.
The Connecticut minimum wage is $16.94 an hour, effective January 1, 2026. On August 5, 2026 the Governor's office announced the next step: $17.48 an hour starting January 1, 2027, the result of the state's annual Employment Cost Index adjustment. If you price recurring contracts a year at a time, that January date touches every crew member paid near the floor.
Source: State of Connecticut, Core-CT, Minimum Wage Increase
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, State Minimum Wage Laws (July 1, 2026)
Both sides of the business are taxable, so the job I care about most is keeping the sales tax you collect out of your income. That money was never yours; it's owed to the state. When it sits in its own liability account, I can show you where every single number in that balance came from, invoice by invoice, and your profit and loss shows only what the business earned. I still split residential and commercial work into separate income lines, because the two can price and staff very differently even when the tax treatment matches.
Labor is the other number. With the wage floor moving to $17.48 in January, a quote built on $16.94 can stop working without anyone noticing. The job profitability estimator runs a job with your own labor rate, so you see it before the price goes out.
Rules checked against the sources above as of October 20, 2026. Rates and rules change; confirm current figures with the agency or your CPA.
About Figure Eight Financial
Figure Eight Financial is Dave Gordon’s bookkeeping practice for residential and commercial cleaning companies. I work with owners in Connecticut and across the country, and I’m a Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor.
Before bookkeeping I studied computer science at Penn State and spent a career at IBM as an engineer, so I build the books as a system: data comes in once, lands in the right place, and ties back to a statement. I’m a bookkeeper, not a CPA or Enrolled Agent. I keep the books your CPA works from, and the tax decisions stay with your CPA.
Credentials and memberships reported by Figure Eight Financial.
More about DaveHow I Help
January brings a new wage floor in Connecticut, and it's one of two numbers I keep honest in your books. The other is sales tax: what you collect on houses and offices alike sits in a liability account rather than income, while labor gets booked at the rate your crews actually earn so a quote matches the cost behind it. Grab a short call below and we'll look at your setup together.
The core service. Transactions recorded and categorized, every account reconciled so the books and the bank agree, and monthly reports that arrive explained, split by residential and commercial and sliceable per contract.
The full picture of how this works for a cleaning companyFor the months where nothing got entered at all. I fill in the missing periods from the ground up, pulling bank feeds, statements, and receipts until every month has a complete set of records.
How catch-up bookkeeping worksFor books that exist but can’t be trusted. I audit what’s there, fix the unreconciled accounts, duplicate transactions, and wrong categories, and tie every balance back to a statement.
How cleanup bookkeeping worksYour crews paid on time, every pay period, with each payroll run recorded in the books so labor shows up against the jobs it belongs to.
How payroll worksRecurring invoices that match your contracts, an aging report you can trust, and follow-up on slow payers handled by a process instead of your evenings. Built for net-60 commercial accounts.
How invoicing and receivables workA file built right for a cleaning company from day one, or rebuilt after the DIY version drifts, and then I teach you to run it. I’m a Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor, and this is honestly my favorite part of the job.
How a proper setup worksWe start with a short call about your business and where the books stand. The first conversation doesn’t cost anything.
I take a look at what you’ve got, your QuickBooks file, your spreadsheet, whatever exists.
You get a written proposal with the price, so the decision is yours with the number in hand.
Let's Connect
If your Connecticut books mix sales tax in with income, or you're not sure they don't, send me a note. I'll look through what you have and tell you plainly what needs fixing. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
