Sales Tax on Cleaning Services in Vermont (2025)

Routine Janitorial Stays Exempt, But Not Every Cleaning Job Does

Vermont's Department of Taxes publishes a rule that a lot of contractors in this state have learned the hard way: cleaning of real property is exempt, and cleaning of tangible personal property is taxable under both the state and any applicable local sales tax. That single sentence, drawn from the department's services taxability worksheet under 32 V.S.A. §9701 and §9771, governs almost every judgment call a Vermont cleaning operator has to make. Routine, repetitive janitorial work performed on a building, such as vacuuming, dusting, trash removal, restroom service, and floor care on a fixed schedule, is treated as a real-property service and is not subject to sales tax.

The complication shows up when a job involves an item rather than a structure. Cleaning tangible personal property, things like rugs removed for off-site cleaning, drapes taken down and laundered, or furniture sent to a shop, is taxable. A Burlington-area janitorial contractor billing a standard weekly office-cleaning contract charges no sales tax on that labor; the same contractor billing a client for pickup-and-clean drapery service is charging tax on that separate line.

The Repetitive-vs-Specialized Distinction Inside Real Property

Even within cleaning of real property, Vermont draws a further internal distinction that mirrors the approach Wisconsin's Department of Revenue takes: routine, repetitive janitorial service is treated differently from a specialized or non-recurring cleaning job on the same property. Standard nightly janitorial, recurring floor maintenance, and scheduled restroom servicing fall under the routine category and are exempt. A one-time specialized service, such as post-construction cleanup, biohazard remediation, or a deep extraction job performed as a standalone project rather than part of a recurring schedule, can be evaluated differently depending on how the work is billed and scoped, since it isn't automatically covered by the same routine-service exemption language.

Worked Example: A Property Manager's Mixed Invoice

A facilities contractor serving a Vermont property management client often bills routine janitorial alongside occasional specialty item cleaning, and the invoice needs to separate the two for tax purposes.

The Burlington-area contractor in this example collects $49.00 in combined state and local option tax, tied entirely to the two tangible-property lines, and remits it to the Department of Taxes through myVTax. Skip the itemization and bill everything as one lump "facilities services" charge, and an auditor has grounds to question whether the exemption was properly applied at all.

Local Option Towns and the 1 Percent Add-On

Vermont's state rate is 6 percent under 32 V.S.A. §9771. A limited number of Vermont municipalities, roughly 19 to 20 towns including Burlington, Stowe, Manchester, Killington, and a handful of others, have adopted a 1 percent local option tax, bringing the combined rate in those specific towns to 7 percent. Every other town in Vermont charges the flat 6 percent state rate with no local add-on. Because the taxable base for cleaning is so narrow to begin with (tangible personal property only), this local layer mostly affects the tax on any taxable goods or the occasional taxable specialty cleaning line, not the bulk of a typical janitorial contract.

The department's sales and use tax section is where local option town rates are published, and those matter here because a contractor serving Burlington, South Burlington, and surrounding towns can be administering different combined rates within a fifteen minute drive. The state is also a full participant in the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, which supplies a certified definitional reference through its annual matrix, which is the cleanest way to confirm a scope classification before a multi-town contract is priced.