Washington, D.C.
The D.C. minimum wage is $18.40 an hour as of July 1, 2026, and the next adjustment is due July 1, 2027, in the middle of the year rather than in January. Residential and commercial cleaning are both subject to D.C. sales tax, and the District decides employee status for unemployment insurance with a common-law, right-to-control test.
The District keeps its own calendar. The wage floor moves in July, the employee test for unemployment insurance is a common-law one, and both payroll registrations start at the same online portal. On this page: sales tax on cleaning, the employee or subcontractor test, payroll registration, the minimum wage, and what all of it does to your books.
Commercial cleaning is taxable in the District, covered by the Office of Tax and Revenue's guidance on real property maintenance services. Residential cleaning is taxable as well, though the reasoning runs differently: the statute has no residential exclusion, and none of the sources behind this page names house cleaning or maid service specifically. The exclusions that do exist, and the code sections behind them, are on the D.C. sales tax on cleaning page.
Source: Council of the District of Columbia, D.C. Code 47-2001 (definitions, retail sale)
Source: Council of the District of Columbia, D.C. Code 47-2201 (tax on sales of services)
Source: DC Office of Tax and Revenue, Sales Tax on Real Property Maintenance Services
How to report and file it is a question for your CPA. I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA; I keep the numbers right.
For unemployment insurance, the District decides whether a worker is an employee with a common-law, right-to-control test, set out in D.C. Code 51-101(2)(A)(i)(II). However the test comes out for a given worker, an employee and a subcontractor show up in different places in your books, and I walked through both in 1099 subcontractors vs. W-2 employees.
Source: Council of the District of Columbia, D.C. Code 51-101
Whether one particular cleaner is an employee under that test is a legal question, and it belongs with your CPA or an employment attorney.
D.C. taxes wages, so employers withhold D.C. income tax from paychecks. Registration for withholding goes through MyTax.DC.gov on Form FR-500. The DOES registration guidance confirms that route, though it doesn't name the office that administers withholding, and this page doesn't either. Unemployment insurance belongs to the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES), through its Office of Unemployment Compensation Tax Division, and that registration runs through the same MyTax.DC.gov portal.
Source: Council of the District of Columbia, D.C. Code 47-1812.08 (withholding)
Source: DC Department of Employment Services, Registration Questions
Which filings your payroll provider makes and which ones go through your CPA is worth settling in writing before the first run.
The D.C. minimum wage is $18.40 an hour, effective July 1, 2026. The next change is a CPI adjustment due July 1, 2027 under D.C. Code 32-1003(a)(6), and as of October 20, 2026 the new rate hasn't been announced. That July date is the one to watch. I've been known to set a reminder and then file it somewhere I'll never see it again, so I don't trust anybody's memory with a mid-year change, mine least of all. If your contracts renew in January, the wage under them can move halfway through the term.
Source: Council of the District of Columbia, D.C. Code 32-1003
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, State Minimum Wage Laws (updated July 1, 2026)
Two things matter most here. Sales tax collected on residential and commercial jobs goes in its own liability account, never in income, because it was never your money. And labor gets booked at the rate your crews actually earn, $18.40 or higher, so job costs reflect what you pay. When the July 2027 rate comes out, I update the labor cost behind your job reports instead of letting last year's number keep pricing your work. You can see how each payroll run gets recorded on my payroll page.
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 D.C. 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
The District's wage floor moves in July, not January, which means a contract that renews at New Year can see its labor cost change halfway through the term. On the bookkeeping side, payroll gets recorded at the rate your crews actually earn, the labor cost behind your job reports is updated when the new rate comes out, and the sales tax you collect stays in its own liability account. If that mid-year change has you wondering about your numbers, book a quick call below.
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 you clean in the District and your books haven't caught up with the July wage change, send me a note. I'll go through them and tell you exactly what needs to be done. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
