Miami, Florida
Taxable commercial cleaning in Miami carries a 7% combined rate: Florida's 6% plus Miami-Dade County's 1% discretionary sales surtax. Residential cleaning isn't taxable in Florida, and neither are carpet cleaning or exterior pressure washing. A business in the City of Miami also needs a City Business Tax Receipt and a Miami-Dade County Local Business Tax Receipt.
Miami puts three local items in front of a cleaning owner: a county surtax on taxable commercial jobs, two business tax receipts, and a county living wage with a narrow reach. This page takes each in turn, then covers what they mean for your books.
Florida taxes cleaning the interior of nonresidential buildings, which covers janitorial, maid, and window cleaning, and window cleaning of nonresidential buildings is taxable inside or out, per the Department of Revenue's brochure GT-800015. The county surtax applies at the rate of the county where the service is performed. For Miami-Dade, Form DR-15DSS for calendar year 2026 lists 1%, made of two 0.5% surtaxes, one effective January 1, 1992 and one effective January 1, 2003, neither with an expiration date. With the state's 6%, that's 7%. My Florida sales tax page has the full list of what's taxable and what isn't.
Source: Florida Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax on Cleaning Services (GT-800015, R. 09/22)
Source: Florida Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax
The City of Miami says a Business Tax Receipt, also called an Occupational License, is required to operate in the City, and that every business also needs a Miami-Dade County Local Business Tax Receipt. In the books, each one is recorded when it's paid, so the cost shows up as a license expense instead of disappearing into general spending.
Source: City of Miami, Get a Business Tax Receipt (BTR)
Miami-Dade County's Living Wage Ordinance, Sec. 2-8.9 of the County Code, covers service contractors on County service contracts over $100,000 a year, and custodial and cleaning work is on its list. Per the County's 2026-2027 notice, it applies only to County service contracts and airport concession agreements awarded before September 30, 2026, and Section 218.077, Florida Statutes, bars the County from mandating a minimum wage on contracts awarded on or after that date. For those covered contracts only, the rate from October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027 is $18.40 an hour with qualifying health benefits valued at least $4.13 an hour, otherwise $22.53.
It isn't a wage rate for private house or office cleaning. If you clean for private customers and the $22.53 figure caught your eye, relax. Not your rate. Contract work only. The state minimum wage, with its sourcing, is on my Florida page.
Source: Miami-Dade County, 2026-2027 Living Wage notice (effective October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027)
Source: Miami-Dade County, Living Wage Ordinance, Sec. 2-8.9
Home cleaning, taxable commercial work, and carpet or exterior pressure washing jobs each get their own income line, and every taxable invoice is tagged with the county where the work was performed, since that county's rate sets the surtax. Collected tax goes to a liability account. If you hold a covered county contract, labor on it is tracked by job so its wage shows apart from your private work; my payroll page covers how wages are recorded.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. Whether a job is taxable and how the surtax is reported are questions for your CPA, and whether a contract falls under the living wage is one for your CPA or an employment attorney.
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 Miami 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
This Miami page comes down to a 1% county surtax on taxable commercial work, two business tax receipts, and a living wage that reaches only certain county contracts and airport concessions awarded before September 30, 2026. Taxable and non-taxable jobs sit on separate income lines, collected tax is held as a liability, and labor on any covered contract is kept by job. Book a short call below and tell me what kind of Miami work you do.
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
Cleaning in Miami and want the surtax, the receipts, and the payroll each in their own place? Tell me how your books are set up now. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
