Start a cleaning business

This guide covers cleaning businesses in the broad sense: recurring house cleaning, office and commercial janitorial work, floor and window care, and the one-person operations that make up most of the industry. The Census Bureau counts this work under janitorial services, and its 2023 counts describe the shape of the field.

Most cleaning companies in America are one person, a vehicle, and a bag of supplies, and the paperwork in this guide is sized for exactly that starting point.

No license, no federal layer

The LLC filing itself is the easy part. A cleaning business forms its entity the way any other business does: formation documents with the state, a registered agent, and a free EIN from the IRS.

What sets cleaning apart from an industry like trucking is what is missing above that filing: there is no federal layer. No federal agency licenses or registers cleaning companies, and none of the ten states in this pilot requires a license for ordinary cleaning work either. The compliance weight sits in four places instead: state sales tax treatment, city and county permits, the paperwork commercial clients demand by contract, and the employer obligations that arrive with the first hire.

Sales tax: where cleaning work is taxable

Sales tax is the obligation new owners most often miss, because a service business does not expect to owe it. Whether cleaning work is taxable is a state decision, and the split runs straight through this pilot: six of the ten states tax some or all cleaning services.

Where the rule applies, the sequence matters: register before the first invoice, collect the tax from the client, and remit it on the state’s filing schedule. Each linked state page carries the specifics. The other four pilot states are covered on their own pages the same way.

City and county permits

With no state license to apply for, the licensing work happens at the city and county level, and it varies more by municipality than by state. Chicago requires a business license before a cleaning company operates in the city. Philadelphia requires a commercial activity license. Florida counties issue a local Business Tax Receipt before work starts. None of these registrations are cleaning-specific; they are what a local government asks of any service business, and the city where you actually work decides which ones apply. The state pages name the large-city requirements.

Insurance, the certificate, and the janitorial bond

Commercial work runs on paperwork no statute mentions. Property managers admit vendors on a certificate of insurance: a one-page proof of the company’s general liability coverage, issued by the insurer, usually naming the client. Many buildings will not let a crew past the lobby without one on file, which makes the insurance policy a practical prerequisite for commercial contracts regardless of any legal requirement. Residential clients rarely ask for the document, but the coverage matters the same way the first time a crew member damages a floor or breaks something expensive.

The janitorial bond that appears throughout this guide’s state pages is a fidelity bond, sold as a janitorial bond or business services bond. It reimburses the client if someone on the crew steals from the premises. No state in this pilot requires one. It is a contract term: commercial clients and property managers write it into bids because crews work inside client buildings, often after hours and unsupervised. Bonding companies price it, and commercial bids commonly list it next to the certificate of insurance.

Chemical rules on the job

Cleaning chemicals carry two sets of federal rules, and both apply to a two-person company the same way they apply to a national contractor. OSHA’s hazard communication standard (29 CFR 1910.1200) covers any workplace where employees work with hazardous chemicals, which describes most cleaning crews: the employer maintains a written hazard communication program, keeps containers labeled, keeps safety data sheets where the crew can reach them during a shift, and trains workers when they first handle the products.

The second set covers disinfectants. A product sold to kill germs on surfaces is an antimicrobial pesticide registered with the EPA, and its label is legally binding: federal law makes it a violation to use the product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. A company that advertises disinfection is promising work its products’ labels have to support.

Hiring: the employer layer

Hiring changes the paperwork more than any other step in this guide. Every new employee completes Form I-9 employment eligibility verification and a Form W-4 for withholding. Payroll adds federal income tax withholding, the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare, and federal unemployment tax, which the employer pays alone on Form 940 and never withholds from wages. The state side adds unemployment insurance registration and, in most states, workers’ compensation coverage; both are governed by state law and sit outside the LLC filing that started the company. A true solo operation carries none of this, one reason the industry’s solo count is as large as it is.

The shortcut that costs the most is paying cleaners as independent contractors when they work like employees. The IRS weighs three things: behavioral control, financial control, and the relationship between the parties, with no single factor deciding on its own. A crew that works your schedule, in your clients’ buildings, with your supplies and under your instructions, looks like employment under that test no matter what the contract says. A business that classifies an employee as a contractor without a reasonable basis is liable for the employment taxes it skipped, and janitorial work shows up repeatedly in the Department of Labor’s misclassification enforcement. The realistic plan prices jobs on employee labor from the first hire.

Residential and commercial: two paper trails

Residential and commercial cleaning are different businesses on paper. A residential operation in a state that does not tax cleaning needs little beyond the filings above plus whatever its city asks. Commercial work adds the certificate of insurance, the bond, and invoice billing, and in Florida it adds the sales tax line residential work does not carry. Many companies run both. The compliance list above does not change; what changes is how much of it a client asks to see before the first job.

The order to do it in

1. 1
   File the LLC and get the free EIN

   The state filing fee is the only required cost at this stage. Steps and fees are on each state page below.
2. 2
   Register for sales tax if your state taxes cleaning

   Before the first invoice. Six pilot states do; the table above names each registration.
3. 3
   Price general liability insurance and the bond

   Before the first commercial bid: buildings ask for the certificate of insurance, and bids commonly list the bond.
4. 4
   Check the city and county permit layer

   A business license, a tax receipt, or nothing, depending on where you work.
5. 5
   Set up the employer paperwork before the first hire

   Form I-9 and W-4 at hiring, with withholding, unemployment registration, and workers’ compensation behind them.

Add it up and cleaning remains one of the cheapest legal starts in this pilot: a state filing fee, a free EIN, tax registration where the state taxes the work, and insurance priced to the size of the operation. Each of these costs less to do on time than to fix late, and the state pages below walk the state-specific parts step by step.