Yonkers
Yonkers has two payroll taxes, both administered by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance: a resident income tax surcharge employers withhold under Publication NYS-50-T-Y for 2026, and a 0.5% nonresident earnings tax on wages earned in Yonkers. Publication 718, effective March 1, 2025, lists the total sales tax rate in the City of Yonkers at 8.875%. New York taxes residential and commercial cleaning, though Publication 750 lists carpet and rug cleaning as exempt.
Yonkers touches a cleaning company's books in three places: what comes out of resident pay, what comes out of nonresident pay, and the rate on taxable invoices. This page covers both payroll taxes, the city's sales tax rate, the Westchester wage, and what it means for your books. State payroll registration is on my New York page.
Both Yonkers taxes are administered by the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance. For residents, employers withhold the Yonkers resident income tax surcharge using Publication NYS-50-T-Y, effective January 1 to December 31, 2026. Under its exact-calculation method, the computed state amount is multiplied by 16.75%, a withholding step rather than a stated surcharge rate, and the resident supplemental wage rate is 1.95975%.
Nonresidents owe the Yonkers nonresident earnings tax at 0.5% of wages earned in Yonkers, per the 2025 Form Y-203 instructions. The 2026 withholding publication says that rate hasn't changed and lists a 0.50% nonresident supplemental rate.
Publication 718 (2/25), effective March 1, 2025, lists the total state and local rate in the City of Yonkers at 8 7/8%, or 8.875%, under reporting code 6511, while Westchester outside its separately listed cities is 8 3/8%. That's the edition the Tax Department served on October 21, 2026, and this page didn't look for a later one. New York taxes residential and commercial cleaning; Publication 750 lists carpet, drapery, and rug cleaning as exempt, and the residential holding comes from a 1992 advisory opinion (TSB-A-92(80)S) that binds only the company that requested it. The rest is on my New York sales tax page.
Source: NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, TSB-A-92(80)S, Maid in New York, Inc. (1992-11-13)
New York's minimum wage for Westchester, along with New York City, Nassau, and Suffolk, is $17.00 an hour as of January 1, 2026. The Department of Labor says the general rate will stay the same on January 1, 2027 because an off-ramp condition was met, and notes the Governor is proposing changes to the off-ramp provisions, with no resulting rate announced. This page doesn't cover any Yonkers wage rule.
Source: NY Labor Law 652 (New York State Senate)
Source: NYS Department of Labor, Minimum Wage
The resident surcharge and the nonresident earnings tax each get their own withholding liability account, apart from New York State withholding, and each employee's residency sits on their payroll record. Yonkers tax isn't one rate. It's a resident surcharge withheld from its own state tables, it's a flat 0.5% on Yonkers wages for nonresidents, and it's the 8.875% sales tax rate listed for the city on taxable invoices. Collected sales tax stays out of revenue in a liability account of its own, and labor is recorded at the wage actually paid, as my payroll page explains.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep both Yonkers taxes and the sales tax in their own accounts; who counts as a resident, which wages are earned in Yonkers, and how each return gets filed 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 Yonkers 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
Yonkers splits payroll tax by residency, so each employee's status lives on their payroll record and each tax gets a liability account of its own. Sales tax collected on taxable cleaning stays out of income. Book a short call below and tell me how your Yonkers crews are set up.
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 Yonkers with residents and nonresidents on the same crew? Tell me how payroll handles them now. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
