Orlando, Florida
In Orlando, taxable commercial cleaning carries a 6.5% combined rate: Florida's 6% plus Orange County's 0.5% discretionary sales surtax, which Form DR-15DSS lists as expiring December 31, 2035. Residential cleaning isn't taxable in Florida, and neither are carpet cleaning or exterior pressure washing.
Orange County's surtax is a single half percent, so the Orlando rate math is short. What takes more care is which jobs it touches and what else an Orlando business needs. This page covers the rate, the business tax receipts, one rule about rental cleaning fees, and the books.
Florida taxes cleaning the interior of nonresidential buildings, including 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. Surtax applies at the rate of the county where the service is performed. DR-15DSS for calendar year 2026 lists Orange County at 0.5%, effective January 1, 2003 and expiring December 31, 2035. Add the state's 6% and a taxable Orange County job comes to 6.5%.
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 Orlando requires a Business Tax Receipt to operate any business within city limits, and its page says all businesses must have both city and county business tax receipts.
Source: City of Orlando, Get a Business Tax Receipt
The Department of Revenue's brochure adds a rule about rentals: a mandatory cleaning fee charged as part of a taxable transient rental is part of the taxable rental charge. The rest of the conditions are on my Florida sales tax page.
Source: Florida Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax on Cleaning Services (GT-800015, R. 09/22)
Taxable commercial work goes on one income line and home cleaning on another, with carpet cleaning and exterior pressure washing on a third. One catch-all tax column in a spreadsheet. It's the worst setup for this, because it can't show which invoices were taxable or which county's rate applied. In the books, collected tax sits in a liability account and each taxable invoice carries the county where the work was performed. If past jobs were lumped together, cleanup bookkeeping is where they get separated. Payroll and reemployment tax are on my Florida page.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. Whether a particular job is taxable, and how the tax and surtax are reported, belongs with your CPA.
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 Orlando 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
For Orlando work, Orange County's 0.5% surtax reaches only taxable commercial jobs, so the books have to know which jobs those are. Home cleaning, taxable commercial work, and carpet or pressure washing work each get an income line, and collected tax sits as a liability tagged by county. Book a short call below and walk me through your Orlando accounts.
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 offices in Orlando and want each job landing on the right line? Tell me how you track it now. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
