Rochester
Taxable cleaning in Rochester carries Monroe County's 8% combined state and local sales tax rate, from Publication 718, effective March 1, 2025, which lists no separate Rochester rate. New York taxes both residential and commercial interior cleaning, while Publication 750 lists carpet, drapery, and rug cleaning services as exempt.
In Rochester, the thing that shapes the books isn't the rate so much as which line each job belongs on. This page covers Monroe County's 8%, where general cleaning and carpet or rug cleaning part ways, the odd-jobs exclusion, the state wage, and what it all means for your books. Payroll registration and the employee test are on my New York page.
Publication 718 lists the combined state and local rate for Monroe County, reporting code 2611, at 8%, and Monroe County includes Rochester. The publication is effective March 1, 2025. The Tax Department's current local rates page, last updated May 12, 2025, shows that same effective date and no change after it, and that page is what this one relies on for treating 8% as current in October 2026.
Commercial interior cleaning is taxable in New York under TSB-M-91(4)S, and residential cleaning is taxable as well. Publication 750 makes no residential carve-out, and the department's holding on residential apartments comes from an advisory opinion, TSB-A-92(80)S, that binds only the company that asked for it. Publication 750 lists laundering and dry cleaning, including carpet, drapery, and rug cleaning services, as exempt, so a Rochester carpet job isn't treated the way general interior cleaning is. Services by an individual who isn't in a regular trade or business, occasional odd jobs, are excluded under Tax Law 1105(c)(5)(i). The rest is on my New York sales tax page.
Source: New York State Senate, NY Tax Law 1105
New York's minimum wage outside New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester is $16.00 an hour, effective January 1, 2026, which is the rate in Monroe County. The Department of Labor says the general rate stays the same on January 1, 2027 because an off-ramp condition was met, and notes that the Governor is proposing changes to the off-ramp provisions, with no resulting rate announced. This page doesn't cover any Rochester city wage rule.
Source: New York State Senate, NY Labor Law 652
Source: New York State Department of Labor, Minimum Wage
Collected sales tax goes to a liability account, and carpet and rug cleaning gets an income line of its own, apart from general cleaning. When the sales tax total for a period is pulled, every single dollar in it should tie back to a Rochester invoice that shows the 8%, and every carpet or rug job left out of it should tie back to an invoice sitting on the exempt line. Wages go in at what each person is actually paid; my payroll page covers the setup.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep taxable and exempt work recorded and traceable; which jobs are taxable and how the tax is reported are questions 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 Rochester 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 Rochester work, general cleaning and carpet or rug cleaning sit on separate income lines, and the 8% is recorded only on the taxable side. Collected tax is held in a liability account, never in income. Book a short call below and tell me how your Rochester jobs are invoiced.
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
Doing carpet work alongside regular cleaning in Rochester? Send me a couple of recent invoices and we'll see which line each one lands on. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
