Honolulu
Hawaii has a general excise tax on the business's gross receipts, not a sales tax, and on Oahu, the City and County of Honolulu, the rate on most services is 4.5%: 4% state GET plus a 0.5% county surcharge effective through December 31, 2030. Cleaning falls under the general rule for services, though no Department of Taxation source naming cleaning or listing exemptions for it was checked. A business may visibly pass GET on to customers, up to a maximum rate of 4.7120% on Oahu.
In Honolulu the tax question isn't what to add to the customer's bill. It's what the business owes on what it takes in. This page covers the Oahu rate and how it's built, the lower rate for subcontracted work, the state minimum wage, and what GET means for your books. Payroll registration and the employee test are on bookkeeping for Hawaii cleaning businesses.
The Hawaii Department of Taxation's GET page sets the state rate at 4% for most activities, including services. The City and County of Honolulu adds a 0.5% county surcharge, effective January 1, 2007 through December 31, 2030, and the surcharge is added only to activities taxed at the 4.0% rate. Together that's 4.5%. Passing GET on to customers is optional, and the department caps the visible pass-on rate on Oahu at 4.7120%; that's a ceiling on what can be passed on, not the tax rate.
GET is a tax on the business's gross receipts, not a sales tax charged on the buyer. Subcontracted, or wholesale, services are taxed at 0.5%, and the county surcharge doesn't apply to activities taxed at 0.5%. Cleaning itself is subject to GET under the general rule covering services; no Department of Taxation source naming cleaning or janitorial service, or listing exemptions for it, was checked. More is on my page on Hawaii's general excise tax and cleaning, and how a particular job is taxed is a question for your CPA.
Source: Hawaii Department of Taxation, Tax Facts 37-1, General Excise Tax (revised May 2025)
Source: Hawaii Department of Taxation, General Excise Tax (GET) Information
Hawaii's minimum wage is $16.00 an hour, effective January 1, 2026, and the next announced change is $18.00 on January 1, 2028. This page doesn't cover any City and County of Honolulu wage rule.
Source: Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Wage Standards Division, Minimum Wage
GET changes how a Honolulu job looks in the books. Think of the 4.5% less as a line on the customer's bill and more as part of the cost of the work: it's figured on your gross receipts, it's made of 4% state GET and the 0.5% county surcharge, and it's the business's tax whether the invoice passes it along or not. Where GET is passed on, the amount collected is tracked so it can be matched against what's owed, and receipts from subcontracted work taxed at 0.5% get their own income line. Labor goes into payroll at the wage actually paid.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep GET and gross receipts recorded; how your receipts are taxed and reported is a question 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 Honolulu 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
On Oahu, GET is the business's tax on its receipts, so the books carry it at 4.5% on regular work, keep receipts from subcontracted work taxed at 0.5% on their own line, and track any GET passed on to customers. Payroll goes in at the wage actually paid. Book a short call below and walk me through a recent Honolulu job.
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
Running jobs on Oahu and not sure how GET shows up in your books? Tell me how your invoices handle it today. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
