New York City
Two numbers set New York City apart for a cleaning business. The minimum wage is $17.00 an hour, the state's higher tier, which also covers Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester. And the combined state and local sales tax rate in the city is 8.875% under the state's Publication 718.
In the city, the wage floor and the sales tax rate are the two numbers that drive what a cleaning job costs and what you bill. This page covers both, plus one reporting rule about contract length.
New York State's minimum wage is $17.00 an hour in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester, and $16.00 in the rest of the state, effective January 1, 2026. The Department of Labor states the general rate will not change on January 1, 2027.
Source: New York State Senate, NY Labor Law 652 (revision May 12, 2023)
Source: NYS Department of Labor, Minimum Wage
Publication 718 (2/25) puts the combined state and local sales tax rate in New York City at 8 7/8%, effective March 1, 2025. Fractions in a tax rate aren't my favorite thing to read, and I'm the guy who enjoys this stuff, so here it is as a decimal: 8.875%. The state's share of that is 4%. Residential and commercial cleaning are both taxable in New York State, with exceptions covered on my New York sales tax page.
Before June 1, 1990, interior cleaning on contracts of 30 days or more was excluded, and the 1990 amendment eliminated that exclusion. For New York City, the department's Notice N-12-3 (March 2012) put short and long cleaning contracts on one reporting line, regardless of contract length.
For a city job, labor gets priced at no less than $17.00 an hour, and sales tax collected goes to a liability account so it never inflates revenue. If you work both in the city and outside the $17.00 region, I keep labor by job so the difference shows. The job profitability estimator runs that math on a single job. Payroll registration and the employee test work the same across the state; they're on my New York page.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep the city's numbers straight in the books; how your sales tax 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 City 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
For a New York City job, the wage tier and the combined sales tax rate are the two numbers that shape what it costs and what you bill. Labor for city work is recorded at the wage your crews are actually paid, kept by job if you also work outside that region, and collected sales tax sits in a liability account so it never inflates revenue. Book a short call below and walk me through how you price jobs in the five boroughs.
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
Cleaning in the five boroughs and want books that reflect the city's wage and tax numbers? Tell me how you price jobs today. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
