Minnesota sales tax
Commercial cleaning is taxable in Minnesota. Residential cleaning depends on the task: janitorial, floor, restroom, carpet, window, wall, and duct cleaning are on the taxable list, while dishwashing, dusting knick-knacks, making beds, and picking up and straightening a room are nontaxable.
Minnesota answers the house cleaning question one chore at a time. The Department of Revenue's guide for building cleaning and maintenance lists the services that are taxable and the ones that aren't, and a single visit can include both. This page covers residential cleaning, commercial cleaning, the conditions and exceptions, what it means for your books, and where your CPA comes in.
Residential cleaning is conditional in Minnesota. A residential visit here isn't just one service on one invoice: it's the floors and the windows, which are on the taxable list, it's the dishes and the beds, which are not, and it's a sales tax answer that changes from task to task inside the same visit. The governing statute is Minn. Stat. 297A.61, subd. 3(g)(6)(iii).
Source: Minnesota Department of Revenue, Building Cleaning and Maintenance industry guide (June 29, 2026)
Commercial cleaning is taxable. Janitorial, office, floor, restroom, carpet, window, wall, and duct cleaning all appear on the taxable list. The taxable list names these among others, so it is not complete.
Source: Minnesota Department of Revenue, Building Cleaning and Maintenance industry guide (June 29, 2026)
Source: Minnesota Department of Revenue, Building Cleaning and Maintenance industry guide (June 29, 2026)
Exception: repairs, snowplowing, sewer and drain cleaning, and septic pumping are listed as nontaxable. If your company offers any of them alongside cleaning, they need their own invoice lines so they are not swept in with taxable work.
The books have to follow the invoice down to the task. I set up separate income lines for taxable and nontaxable services, so a visit that includes floors and bed-making records each piece where it belongs, and the sales tax you collect goes to a liability account instead of income. If you've been invoicing one flat house cleaning price for months, catch-up bookkeeping is where we sort the backlog.
For payroll, the state minimum wage, and the Minneapolis and Saint Paul rates, see bookkeeping for Minnesota cleaning businesses.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep the taxable and nontaxable work apart in the books and the numbers tied to your invoices. Whether a given task is taxable for your business, and what goes on a return, 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 Minnesota 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
Minnesota answers the sales tax question one chore at a time, so your books have to follow the invoice down to the task. Floors and windows go to a taxable income line, dishes and bed-making to a nontaxable one, and the sales tax you collect goes to a liability account instead of income. Book a short call below and bring a typical house cleaning invoice; I'll show you how I'd split it.
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 typical Minnesota house cleaning invoice, and I'll show you how I'd split it in the books. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
