New York
In New York, the region you clean in sets your wage floor: $17.00 an hour in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester, and $16.00 everywhere else. Residential and commercial cleaning are both subject to state sales tax, with carpet and rug cleaning treated differently. For unemployment insurance, the state asks whether you have the right to control the work.
New York's minimum wage comes in two tiers a dollar apart, and that dollar runs through the labor cost of every job priced at the floor. That's the first thing I look at for a New York cleaning company, and sales tax is a close second. This page covers how sales tax treats cleaning, the employee test, payroll registration, the minimum wage tiers, and how I set up the books around all of it.
Cleaning is taxable in New York State, residential and commercial alike. An old exclusion for interior cleaning on contracts of 30 days or more ended with a 1990 amendment. Publication 750 lists carpet, drapery, and rug cleaning with laundering and dry cleaning as exempt, so those jobs are handled differently from general interior cleaning. The details, including where the residential position comes from, are on my page on whether New York taxes cleaning.
Source: NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, TSB-A-92(80)S, Maid in New York, Inc. (November 13, 1992)
New York's unemployment insurance program uses the common-law test, which turns on whether the business has the right to control the work. Employment is defined in Labor Law 511. The law also sets statutory presumptions of employment for construction (Labor Law 861-c) and commercial goods transportation (Labor Law 862-b); this page covers the general test. How employees and subcontractors each land in the books is in 1099 subcontractors vs. W-2 employees. Whether a specific worker is an employee is a legal question for your CPA or an employment attorney.
Source: NYS Department of Labor, Independent Contractors (IA 318.14, 8/19)
Source: New York State Senate, NY Labor Law 511 (most recent revision January 10, 2020)
New York taxes wages, and employers withhold state income tax under Tax Law 671. Withholding belongs to the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, but the registration is filed through the Department of Labor's NYS-100 on New York Business Express. Unemployment insurance sits with the Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Division, which has its own registration page. Publication NYS-50 (revised December 2025) is the state's employer guide covering unemployment insurance, wage reporting, and withholding in one place.
Source: New York State Senate, NY Tax Law 671 (revision April 29, 2022)
Source: NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, Hiring employees
Source: NYS Department of Labor, Register for Unemployment Insurance
Since January 1, 2026, the minimum wage has been $17.00 an hour in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester, and $16.00 in the rest of the state (Labor Law 652). The Department of Labor says the general rate won't change on January 1, 2027, because an "off-ramp" condition was met. The home care aide minimum does rise that day, to $20.00 in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester and $19.00 in the rest of the state. The DOL also notes the Governor is proposing changes to the off-ramp provisions, and no new rate has been announced from that.
If your crews work in the five boroughs, my New York City page puts the $17.00 tier next to the city's combined sales tax rate.
Source: New York State Senate, NY Labor Law 652 (revision May 12, 2023)
Source: NYS Department of Labor, Minimum Wage
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, State Minimum Wage Laws (updated July 1, 2026)
A New York setup needs a few extra lanes. Bookkeeping here isn't just recording deposits. It's knowing which jobs were carpet or rug cleaning, it's keeping the sales tax you collected out of revenue until it goes to the state, and it's pricing labor at the wage tier you actually pay. When payroll is recorded against each job, the region shows up in your job costs instead of hiding in a total. That's how I handle payroll for cleaning businesses.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep the taxable and exempt work separated and the sales tax tracked; how any of it is 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 New York 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
A dollar between New York's two wage tiers runs through the labor cost of every job priced at the floor. I record payroll against each job at the tier you actually pay, keep carpet and rug work apart from taxable interior cleaning, and hold collected sales tax out of revenue until it goes to the state. Book a short call below and tell me how your New York crews are set up today.
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 crews in New York and not sure your books reflect the wage tier or the sales tax? Tell me how you're set up today. We'll go through it together, and the first conversation doesn't cost anything.
