Is pressure washing taxable? Seven states answer in their own words

Search whether pressure washing is taxable and you get licensing checklists that say sales tax "may apply depending on your state." That is true of everything. The states themselves are more helpful: several name this exact service, and the answers are short enough to quote.

What the ranking pages say

Five pages, read 11 October 2026. Counted:

• 3 of 5 give no sales-tax answer for any state.
• 0 of 5 cover more than one state. 0 of 5 state a rate.
• 1 of 5 links to a state's own document.
• 0 of 5 mention that the answer can differ between two lines of the same job.

Seven states, in their own words

State	What its own source says	State rate
New Jersey	Taxable. The Division of Taxation's FAQ asks about pressure washing the exterior of a home and answers yes: it is servicing and maintaining real property.	6.625%
Texas	Taxable. "Pressure washing buildings, sidewalks, and parking lots is taxable as building or grounds cleaning."	6.25%
Pennsylvania	Taxable. The code lists "siding or exterior cleaning of a building, including the pressure washing of a building" as a building cleaning service.	6%
Washington	Taxable. Cleaning exterior walls is not a janitorial service, so retail sales tax is collected. Routine window washing is janitorial, and it is not.	6.5%
Ohio	The building, yes. The driveway, no — if it is a separate line.	5.75%
North Carolina	Exempt. The Department of Revenue's chart lists power washing real property — buildings, patios, driveways, decks, sidewalks, parking lots — as exempt. A pool is the exception.	—
Florida	Not taxable. The rule says pressure cleaning of the exterior of a building, or of parking lots, "is not taxable as a cleaning service," and that residential cleaning services are not taxable.	—

Ohio: one job, two answers

Ohio's information release is the one to read even if you never work there, because its worked example is this trade. A power washing company is hired to clean the outside of a house, and the customer asks for the driveway too. The release:

• Power washing building exteriors — siding, roofs, chimneys, gutters — is a taxable building maintenance service.
• "If the power washing company separately states the charge for cleaning the driveway, no tax is due on that part of the bill."
• If it does not, "the entire amount is taxable."

Our arithmetic: a $300 house wash with a separately stated $100 driveway carries $17.25 of state tax. The same $400 as one line carries $23.00. The work is identical. The invoice decides.

The release also sets a threshold: you must register and collect once your sales of the service reach $5,000 in a calendar year.

What that does to a quote

• Decide whether your price is before or after tax, and say which. In New Jersey a $400 house wash is $426.50 at the door. A customer comparing your "$400" with a competitor's "$425 all in" is not comparing the same thing.
• Quote in lines, and keep the lines on the invoice. A named line per surface is already the clearer way to quote. In Ohio it is also the difference between taxing part of the job and all of it; in Washington, between walls and windows.
• Do not carry one state's answer across a border. An operator working both sides of the North Carolina line is exempt on one side and may not be on the other. The rule follows the property, not the truck.
• Read the sentence yourself. Every row above links to the page it came from. Each takes a minute to read and names your service.

Tax is the easiest line on a quote to compute, once you know whether it applies: a fixed percentage of lines you have already priced. The hard part was only ever finding the sentence.

Where these figures come from

Each state's position is from its own revenue department's publication or its administrative code, linked above: New Jersey's sales and use tax FAQ (updated 24 April 2025), Texas publication 94-111, 61 Pa. Code §60.1, Washington's tax topic on exterior cleaning, Ohio information release ST 2002-04 (updated April 2025) and North Carolina's services-to-real-property chart. Florida's rule, 12A-1.0091, was read from a legal publisher's copy because the state's own site would not load. State rates are from each department's own rate page; local rates are not included. Pennsylvania's rule does not carve out homes from exterior cleaning, and we read it as covering them; that is our reading. Other states are not covered here, and we could not reach New York's guidance at all. All were read on 11 October 2026. This is not tax advice — ask your state or an accountant before you change what you collect.