St. Louis
The City of St. Louis has two employer-facing taxes: a 1% earnings tax the employer withholds from the wages of employees who live or work in the city, and a 0.5% payroll expense tax the employer pays on wages earned in the city. Religious, charitable, and certain nonprofit, hospital, educational, and government entities are exempt from the payroll expense tax. On wages, the city says its minimum wage is the same as Missouri's, which is $15.00 an hour as of January 1, 2026.
St. Louis is a payroll tax city, and both of its taxes land on the employer's side of the desk. This page covers the earnings tax withholding, the payroll expense tax, the quarterly and annual returns the city lists, the business license, and what the city says about minimum wage. Missouri registration and the employee test are on bookkeeping for Missouri cleaning businesses.
The Collector of Revenue's Earnings Tax Department describes the earnings tax as a 1% tax on the wages of employees living or working in the city, withheld by the employer. Employers located in the city withhold it on all employees, regardless of where they work.
The payroll expense tax is 0.5%, paid by the employer on wages earned in the City of St. Louis. Religious, charitable, and certain nonprofit, hospital, educational, and government entities are exempt from it. The city says the two taxes are filed together each quarter on Forms W-10/P-10, with an annual W-3 reconciliation due January 31.
The City of St. Louis says its minimum wage is the same as the State of Missouri's, because state law bars municipalities from setting a higher rate, and its page dates that state law to August 28, 2017. A $15 figure on the same undated page applies only to City civil service employees. Missouri's minimum wage is $15.00 an hour, effective January 1, 2026, with no change announced as of October 20, 2026.
Source: City of St. Louis, Minimum Wage
Source: Missouri Revisor of Statutes, RSMo 290.502
Anyone engaging in business within St. Louis city limits needs a business license, the Graduated Business License, issued by the Office of the License Collector.
The two taxes belong in different places. The 1% earnings tax is withheld from your employees' pay, so it sits in a withholding liability account until it's paid over, while the 0.5% payroll expense tax is your own cost and goes to an expense account. I like to try to break the numbers before anyone relies on them: each quarter, the withholding liability gets checked against what payroll actually withheld, and the expense gets checked against wages earned in the city, so a mismatch shows up in the books and not after the W-10/P-10 numbers go to your CPA. Wages earned in the city carry their own tag in payroll, since the payroll expense tax is figured on them.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep both city taxes recorded and reconciled; whether your business owes either one, and how they get filed, 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 St. Louis 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. Louis puts two taxes on the employer's side: the 1% earnings tax, withheld from wages and held as a liability, and the 0.5% payroll expense tax, recorded as your own expense. Both get checked against payroll every quarter so the numbers your CPA sees tie out. Book a short call below and tell me how your St. Louis payroll runs.
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 payroll for St. Louis work? Tell me how city wages are tagged in your payroll today. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
