Indiana sales tax
Residential and commercial cleaning don't appear to be taxable in Indiana. That's an inference: the Department of Revenue says service transactions generally aren't taxable retail transactions, and no Department source names house cleaning or janitorial cleaning. When property is transferred along with a service, the Department looks to the true object of the transaction.
Indiana's answer for cleaning companies is built from a general rule rather than a sentence about cleaning. That's worth knowing up front, because a reading of a general rule has edges that a named rule doesn't. This page covers residential cleaning, commercial cleaning, the conditions in the Department's bulletins, what it means for your books, and where your CPA comes in. The statute behind these bulletins, and any effective date for them, aren't covered here.
House cleaning is treated here as not taxable. That's inferred from the Department of Revenue's general rule in Sales Tax Information Bulletin 26 that service transactions generally aren't taxable retail transactions, and from the pool cleaning example in Bulletin 21, which covers lawn care applications, pool cleaning, and similar exterior home services. No Department source names house cleaning, so this is a reading of the general rule, not a Department statement about your work.
Commercial and janitorial cleaning get the same answer by the same route: not taxable, inferred from the Department's general services rule. No Department source names janitorial cleaning.
Indiana's cleaning answer rests on a general rule, not a named one. I trust a rule more after I've tried to knock it over, so I go hunting for the invoice that would tip it: the job where a product changed hands along with the cleaning, or a line so vague nobody could say what the crew did. Each invoice line in your books says what was done, and anything sold along with the cleaning gets its own line. If sales tax is ever collected, it sits in a liability account until it's paid, never in income.
If past invoices lump everything into one number, cleanup bookkeeping sorts the old entries into the right accounts. For payroll and the minimum wage, see bookkeeping for cleaning businesses in Indiana.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep the work on each invoice described clearly enough that the question can be answered. Whether a specific job of yours is taxable in Indiana, especially one where property changes hands, is a call 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 Indiana 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
When a state's answer is inferred rather than spelled out, the invoice detail carries the weight. Every line in your books says what the crew did, and any product that changed hands along with the cleaning is recorded separately, so the question can be answered later. Book a short call below and bring a few invoices.
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
Send me a couple of your Indiana invoices and we'll look at how the work is described. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
