St. Petersburg, Florida
Taxable commercial cleaning in St. Petersburg carries 7%, and the county piece of it has a listed end date: Form DR-15DSS shows Pinellas County's 1% surtax, effective February 1, 1990, expiring December 31, 2029, on top of Florida's 6%. Home cleaning, carpet cleaning, and exterior pressure washing aren't taxable. A business located inside city limits needs a City Business Tax Receipt.
For a St. Petersburg cleaning company, this page covers two local items: one county surtax with an expiration date in 2029, and a city business tax receipt with an open question for crews based elsewhere. Below are both and what they mean for your books.
Form DR-15DSS for calendar year 2026 lists Pinellas County's discretionary sales surtax at 1%, effective February 1, 1990 and expiring December 31, 2029. With Florida's 6%, taxable work done in Pinellas comes to 7%. This page doesn't cover what follows the 2029 date.
Per brochure GT-800015, cleaning nonresidential interiors is taxable, including janitorial, maid, and window cleaning, and window cleaning of nonresidential buildings is taxable inside or out. Residential cleaning, carpet cleaning, and exterior pressure washing of buildings and parking lots aren't. The surtax applies at the rate of the county where the service is performed. More on my Florida sales tax page.
Source: Florida Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax on Cleaning Services (GT-800015, R. 09/22)
The City of St. Petersburg's Business Tax Division says a Business Tax Receipt, which it also calls a Business Tax Certificate, is required for businesses located inside city limits. Mobile and temporary businesses, vehicles for hire, and insurance companies need one regardless of their business address. The page doesn't define a mobile business, so whether a cleaning company based outside the city but working in it needs a receipt isn't settled there; that's a question for the City. Pinellas County repealed its county occupational license requirement effective September 30, 1995, says businesses in unincorporated areas need no county receipt, and leaves municipalities to set their own rules.
Source: City of St. Petersburg, Business Tax Division, Business Tax Certificates
Collected tax goes to a liability account, and every taxable invoice records the county where the work was done. A surtax rate typed by hand into an invoice template? It's the worst place for it. Nobody remembers it's sitting there when DR-15DSS changes, and with Pinellas listing an end date of December 31, 2029, I'd rather the rate live in one setting that gets checked against each year's form. Home jobs, taxable commercial work, and carpet or pressure washing jobs stay on separate income lines, and the business tax receipt is recorded as a license expense. Payroll and reemployment tax are on my Florida page.
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.
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 St. Petersburg 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
St. Petersburg's 1% Pinellas surtax applies to taxable commercial work and lists an end date of December 31, 2029. Collected tax is held as a liability with its county on each invoice, and the rate in the books is checked against each year's DR-15DSS. Book a short call below and walk me through your St. Petersburg work.
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 commercial buildings in St. Petersburg and want the surtax set up so a rate change is easy to catch? Tell me how you invoice today. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
