Sales Tax on Cleaning Services in Florida (2026)

Florida is one of the few states that spells out the taxability of cleaning services in a dedicated administrative rule rather than leaving it to guidance letters or case-by-case interpretation. Florida Administrative Code Rule 12A-1.0091 addresses "nonresidential cleaning services" directly, and the answer for most commercial cleaning contracts is that the state's 6% sales tax applies, collected by the cleaning company from the client at the time of service.

What Rule 12A-1.0091 actually taxes

Florida's sales tax statute, particularly Fla. Stat. §212.05(1)(i), lists nonresidential cleaning services among the specifically enumerated taxable services in the state, alongside categories like pest control and burglar/security alarm monitoring. Rule 12A-1.0091 implements this by defining "nonresidential cleaning services" to include cleaning of buildings, offices, and other structures not used as a person's permanent residence: office buildings, retail stores, medical facilities, and similar commercial or institutional spaces. The rule sets the taxable event as the charge for cleaning, not a specific line item for labor versus supplies, meaning the full invoice amount for a covered service is generally taxable, not just any goods provided.

Window cleaning, floor waxing, and similar upkeep on nonresidential buildings fall in the taxable category, because they are part of the janitorial work NAICS 561720 describes. The test is that classification, not the label on the invoice, so a service carrying its own NAICS code sits outside the tax even when the customer is commercial. That is why carpet cleaning and exterior pressure washing are treated differently from the rest of a janitorial contract.

The residential carve-out and why it matters

Florida's approach hinges heavily on the word "nonresidential." Cleaning services performed at a private residence, such as a homeowner hiring a maid service for a single-family home, generally fall outside the taxable category the rule targets, since the rule is written specifically around nonresidential structures. This creates a meaningful line for cleaning businesses that serve both markets: a company cleaning apartment common areas, medical offices, and retail storefronts is collecting tax on that revenue, while a sister division cleaning single-family homes for individual homeowners generally is not, assuming the work is properly characterized and billed.

Local discretionary surtax stacks on top of the state rate

Florida's base state sales tax rate is 6%, but most counties add a discretionary sales surtax on top, ranging from 0.5% to 1.5% in most counties, with a handful going slightly higher. Combined rates on a taxable nonresidential cleaning contract commonly land between 6.5% and 7.5% depending on the county where the service is performed, since Florida generally sources sales tax to the location where the service is delivered.

Worked example: a Tampa commercial contract

Consider a janitorial company with an $8,000 monthly contract to clean a Tampa office building. Hillsborough County's combined discretionary surtax brings the total local rate to 1%, on top of the state's 6%, for a combined 7% rate. Because this is nonresidential cleaning under Rule 12A-1.0091, the company would calculate tax as $8,000 × 7% = $560 collected from the client and remitted to the Florida Department of Revenue with its monthly or quarterly sales tax return, on top of the $8,000 the company retains for its services.

What this means for your business

• Register for a Florida sales tax certificate if you serve commercial clients. Nonresidential cleaning companies need to register with the Department of Revenue and collect tax on covered invoices from day one.
• Separate residential and commercial revenue clearly. If your business serves both markets, keep clean records distinguishing residential jobs (generally untaxed) from nonresidential jobs (generally taxed) to support your filings.
• Confirm the local surtax rate for each county you serve. Because Florida sources tax to the county where cleaning is performed, a multi-county operator needs the correct combined rate for each jobsite, not a single statewide number.
• Supplies you use are generally not separately taxed to the client. Since the whole nonresidential cleaning charge is taxable, most operators don't need to separately track supply taxability the way exemption-state operators do; the full invoice carries the tax.
• Mixed-use buildings need a closer look. A structure with both residential units and commercial space, like a mixed-use development, may require apportioning charges between taxable and nontaxable areas.

Where Florida sits relative to other states that tax cleaning

Florida's rate sits in the middle of the states that specifically tax cleaning services, below Minnesota's broadest-base combined rates but above Maryland's flat 6% state-only rate. The residential exclusion is a meaningful structural difference from Minnesota and Nebraska, both of which reach residential cleaning to varying degrees.

Frequently asked questions

For a side-by-side look at how neighboring frameworks compare, see our guides to cleaning services sales tax in Connecticut and cleaning services sales tax in South Carolina.

The department's sales and use tax page is where rate changes, discretionary county surtax notices, and filing frequency updates are posted, and county surtaxes are the item most often missed on multi-site accounts in this state. A contractor servicing locations in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties is administering three different combined rates on one contract. Practitioner material at the AICPA state and local tax resource center addresses how that allocation is documented, which matters when an audit asks how surtax was sourced across sites.