Yes. Office cleaning is taxable in Pennsylvania, and it has been since October 1, 1991. If you pay a company to clean your office, the state treats that as a taxable building cleaning service, and the 6 percent sales tax applies.
There’s a catch that works in your favor, though, and most business owners never use it. For the interior of an office, the labor part of the bill can be left out of the tax, but only if the cleaning company writes it on the invoice a specific way. Get that one line right and you pay tax on a smaller number.
All of it comes straight from Pennsylvania’s building cleaning tax rule, 61 Pa. Code 60.1, so you can check your own invoice against the source.
What Pennsylvania Actually Taxes
Pennsylvania taxes “building cleaning services.” That’s the legal category, and office cleaning sits squarely inside it. The state started taxing these services on October 1, 1991, and the rule has held ever since.
The tax is the standard Pennsylvania sales tax, currently 6 percent. In Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, and across most of northeastern Pennsylvania, there’s no extra local sales tax, so 6 percent is the whole rate. Only Allegheny County and Philadelphia add a local piece on top.
So the starting point is simple. A cleaning company invoices you for cleaning your office, and 6 percent tax applies to that service. The rest of this comes down to what counts as cleaning, and how much of the bill the tax actually lands on.
What Counts as Taxable Cleaning
The regulation spells out what “building cleaning” covers, and it’s broad. These services are taxable in Pennsylvania:
- Housekeeping and general office cleaning, including window cleaning, carpet cleaning, floor waxing, and furniture polishing
- Chimney and fireplace cleaning, inside and out
- Cleaning light fixtures
- Duct work cleaning
- Acoustical tile cleaning and venetian blind cleaning
- Indoor pool cleaning
- Fire and smoke restoration cleaning (the cleaning part, not the repairs)
- Exterior building cleaning, including pressure washing the outside of a building
- Cleaning and degreasing service station equipment and areas
If the work your cleaner does falls in that list, it’s a taxable service. Most routine office cleaning, the vacuuming, restroom sanitizing, dusting, trash removal, and floor care, is taxable building cleaning. For a fuller picture of what a standard office contract covers, see the complete office cleaning services guide.
The Office Exception That Lowers Your Tax
For the interior of an office building, Pennsylvania lets the cleaning company exclude the labor from the taxable amount, effective April 1, 1995. Before that date the entire bill was taxed. After it, the workers’ wages and related costs can come out of the taxed number.
The regulation calls these “employee costs,” and they include the wages, salaries, benefits, expense reimbursements, and the payroll and withholding taxes for the people who clean your office. What’s left after you subtract them is called the “service fee,” and that smaller number is what the 6 percent applies to.
There’s one hard condition. The employee costs only come out if they’re separately stated on the invoice, either itemized or listed as one aggregate figure. If your invoice is a single lump sum that just says “cleaning service,” none of the labor is excluded and the whole amount gets taxed. The exception exists, but you only get it when the paperwork shows it.
Two things have to be true for this to apply. The building has to qualify as an office building, and the labor has to be written out on the bill. If your cleaner doesn’t itemize labor, that’s worth a conversation. Getting it into your agreement is exactly the kind of detail a good commercial cleaning contract should cover.
What makes a building an “office building”
Pennsylvania’s definition is about use, not the name on the door. A building is an office building if more than 50 percent of its total square footage is used for business.
That’s a wide net. It covers ordinary offices, but the regulation also lists warehouses, retail stores, banks, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, repair garages, and more. Apartment houses, retirement homes, condos, and private residences don’t qualify unless they’re predominantly used for business. So an attorney working out of a home office that’s under half the house doesn’t get the labor exclusion, even with a perfectly itemized bill.
What an Itemized Office Invoice Looks Like
When a cleaner uses the labor exclusion, the state expects the invoice to show the math. At a minimum it lays out:
- Gross Fee (the full charge)
- Less: Employee Costs (the labor being excluded)
- Taxable Service Fee (what’s left)
- PA Sales Tax Rate (6 percent)
- PA Sales Tax Due
- Total Invoice Amount
That format is the whole game. It shows the state which part of the bill is labor and which part is the taxable service fee, and it’s what lets you legally pay tax on the smaller number. A bill without those lines gets taxed in full.
Cleaning Billed Through Your Lease
If your landlord provides the cleaning and bills it to you as part of the lease, it’s still taxable, and the labor exclusion usually doesn’t help. When a lessor cleans the space a tenant is renting and charges for it, that cleaning is taxable including the employee costs, unless the service is incidental to the lease.
Incidental means the cleaning of common areas or the outside of the building, the hallways and grounds a landlord maintains anyway. Cleaning inside your specific leased offices is not incidental, so it’s taxable, and if it isn’t separated from the rent on the bill, the whole lease charge can be pulled into the tax. If cleaning rides your lease, ask how it’s stated.
Who Doesn’t Pay It
Some buyers are exempt from the tax entirely. Pennsylvania excludes building cleaning services purchased by:
- Qualified charitable organizations, religious organizations, and nonprofit educational institutions (unless the cleaning is used in an unrelated trade or business)
- Volunteer fire companies
- The federal government and its agencies
- The Commonwealth and its subdivisions, including public school districts
If your organization is one of these, the cleaning of your building isn’t taxed. For an ordinary for-profit business, though, the tax applies, and the labor exclusion above is the tool that lowers it.
What Isn’t Taxable
Not everything a cleaning or maintenance crew does is taxable building cleaning. Pennsylvania specifically leaves these out:
- Building repairs (fixing, not cleaning)
- Painting and wallpapering, interior or exterior
- Boiler and furnace maintenance (since January 1, 1992)
- Snow plowing and driveway sealing
- Plumbing repairs, like clearing drains or fixing leaks
- Cleaning outdoor in-ground pools
- Residential air conditioning maintenance (since July 1, 2000)
A couple of these trip people up. Drapery and upholstery cleaning isn’t taxed as building cleaning, but it can be taxable as a service to personal property instead. And when a repair job includes both cleaning and fixing, only the cleaning is taxable, and only if the invoice separates the two. If it doesn’t, the whole charge gets taxed.
What to Do About Your Bill
Start by reading your current cleaning invoice. If it’s one lump “cleaning service” number, you’re paying 6 percent on the entire amount, including the labor you might not owe tax on.
So confirm your building is used more than half for business, then ask your cleaning company to separately state employee costs on the invoice. A company that cleans offices in Pennsylvania should already know how to do this. If yours can’t or won’t, that tells you something about how they run their books.
None of this changes what cleaning costs before tax, which is a separate question; our guide to what commercial cleaning costs in Pennsylvania covers that. It changes how much tax rides on top. And when you’re comparing quotes, remember to read them the same way: a bill that itemizes labor and one that doesn’t will be taxed differently on the same work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is office cleaning taxable in Pennsylvania?
Yes. Office cleaning is a taxable building cleaning service in Pennsylvania and has been since October 1, 1991. The 6 percent state sales tax applies. For the interior of an office building, the labor portion can be excluded from the tax if the cleaning company separately states employee costs on the invoice.
Are janitorial services taxable in PA?
Yes. Janitorial, maid, and housekeeping services all fall under “building cleaning services” in Pennsylvania and are taxable. The same office labor exclusion applies: if the work is inside an office building and the employee costs are itemized on the invoice, only the service fee is taxed, not the labor.
Is labor taxable on office cleaning in Pennsylvania?
Not necessarily. For interior office building cleaning, separately stated employee costs, the wages, benefits, and payroll taxes of the cleaners, are excluded from the taxable amount as long as they’re itemized or listed as one figure on the invoice. If labor isn’t separated out, the full bill is taxed.
What counts as an office building for PA sales tax?
A building used more than 50 percent of its total square footage for business. That includes offices, but also warehouses, retail stores, banks, restaurants, hotels, and hospitals. Apartment houses and private residences don’t qualify unless they’re predominantly used for business.
Is carpet cleaning or floor waxing taxable in Pennsylvania?
Yes. Carpet cleaning, floor waxing, window cleaning, and furniture polishing are all listed as taxable building cleaning services when done to a building. Inside an office building, the same labor exclusion can apply if employee costs are separately stated.
Are cleaning services taxable if my landlord bills them through the lease?
Usually yes. When a landlord provides cleaning of your leased space and charges for it, that cleaning is taxable, including the labor, unless it’s incidental to the lease, like common areas or the building exterior. If the cleaning isn’t separated from the rent on the invoice, the whole charge can be taxed.