Do Florida Contractors Charge Sales Tax on Labor?

Real property work: you pay the tax, the customer never sees it

Florida classifies contracts by how they are priced. Lump sum, cost plus, fixed fee, upset or guaranteed price and time and materials contracts all land in the same place: you are the ultimate consumer of everything you install. You pay sales tax to your suppliers and you charge your customer nothing.

Rule 12A-1.051 is blunt about the part contractors most often get wrong. Contractors on those contracts "should charge no tax to their customers, regardless of whether they itemize charges for materials and labor in their proposals or invoices, because they are not engaged in selling tangible personal property." Splitting labor and materials into separate lines does not create a taxable sale in Florida, and it does not exempt anything either. Itemize for clarity, not for tax.

A contractor doing only this kind of work generally does not have to register as a dealer, unless you owe tax on items you fabricate for your own use.

Source: Florida DOR GT-800067 and Rule 12A-1.051, F.A.C.

The one contract that flips it: retail sale plus installation

There is a sixth pricing arrangement, and it puts you on the other side of the counter. In a retail sale plus installation contract you list and price every material in the contract before work begins, and the customer takes title to and risk of loss on those materials as they are delivered rather than taking title only to the finished job. The work is then billed for an additional agreed price or by time used.

If a contract fits, you buy the itemized materials tax exempt with your Annual Resale Certificate (Form DR-13), register as a dealer, charge the customer tax on the price of the materials, and charge no tax on the installation labor. The trap is partial itemization. If some materials are listed and priced and others are not, the contract does not qualify and you are back to paying tax at the supply house.

Source: Rule 12A-1.051(3)(d) and (5), F.A.C.

Fixtures, appliances and the built-in test

A fixture is permanently attached but keeps its own identity: built-in cabinets and counters, central air conditioning, furnaces, elevators, kitchen and bathroom sinks, wired lighting. Installing a fixture is real property work. You pay tax when you buy it and charge the customer nothing on either the fixture or the labor. That is the opposite of California, where fixtures are a retail sale.

Appliances split three ways, and the split decides your invoice:

• Hard-wired or permanently installed residential appliances become real property. You pay the tax, the customer sees none.
• Free-standing residential appliances stay personal property. Charge the customer tax on the appliance and the labor.
• Commercial appliances used in a business count as machinery and equipment. Charge tax on the appliance and the labor.

The same logic sorts an HVAC job. A central system is a fixture and carries no tax to the customer. A window unit you supply and install is tangible personal property and the whole charge is taxable.

Source: Florida DOR GT-800067.

Work on things that are not the building

Repairing tangible personal property makes you a retail dealer. Buy the parts tax exempt for resale and charge the customer tax on labor and materials together. This catches appliance repair, small engine and mower work, window unit service, and anything you fix on a bench.

Two details are worth putting on the invoice. First, a repair that uses no parts at all is not taxable, but you have to be able to prove it, so write "labor only, no parts supplied" on the bill and keep it. Second, tax applies to the parts even when you supply them at no charge. Consumables that become part of the repaired item (solder, welding rod, bolts, paint) can be bought for resale. Shop overhead that does not go into the item (sandpaper, detergents, tools) is taxable to you.

Fabrication charges are taxable in their own right. Fabrication is cutting, threading, shaping, bending, welding, shearing, punching, drilling or machining material out of its original state.

Source: Florida DOR GT-800067.

Fabricating your own materials, and the job site exception

If you manufacture something for your own use in a real property contract, you owe use tax on its fabricated cost, meaning direct materials, labor and allocated production costs. A cabinet shop that builds and installs its own cabinets pays tax on the manufactured cost, not on the shelf price of the lumber alone. If you already paid tax to the materials vendor, exclude those materials from the fabricated cost so you are not taxed twice.

The exception is worth money: if the fabrication happens at the job site, the fabrication labor is exempt and only the materials are taxed. Cutting and assembling on site rather than in the shop changes the bill.

Source: Florida DOR GT-800067 and Rule 12A-1.051, F.A.C.

Cleaning and pest control: the two lists that catch service businesses

Florida taxes almost no services, then names these two by statute. Section 212.05(1)(i) taxes "nonresidential cleaning, excluding cleaning of the interiors of transportation equipment, and nonresidential building pest control services," tied to NAICS national numbers 561720 and 561710 as published in 2007.

For a cleaning business that means the commercial route is taxable and the houses are not. Office cleaning, janitorial and custodial work, floor waxing, disinfecting, restroom and washroom service, maid service and window cleaning in a commercial building all carry tax on the total sales price. The same work in a private home carries none. Nonresidential also covers hotels and anything rented as transient accommodation.

The statute ties the tax to one specific NAICS number, which is why exterior work sits outside it. Pressure washing a building exterior, a driveway or a parking lot is classified separately from janitorial services, so it falls outside the enumerated service. That classification is the entire argument, so confirm it with your accountant before you stop charging tax on a commercial washing contract.

Pest control follows the same residential line. Nonresidential is taxable, including annual and periodic inspections, termite control, fumigation, bird proofing and pre-construction soil treatment on a commercial building. Residential pest control is not taxable. Either way you pay tax on your own chemicals, equipment and supplies.

Source: Florida Statutes 212.05(1)(i), GT-800015, Cleaning Services and GT-800026, Pest Control Services.

Lawn care and landscaping: Florida leaves them alone

This is the biggest difference between Florida and Texas, and it catches crews that work both states. The Department of Revenue says plainly that mowing, blowing, weed eating, edging and related lawn care services are not subject to tax. Tree removal, stump grinding and debris hauling transfer no property to the customer and are not taxable either.

Planting is different in mechanism but the same on the invoice. Trees, perennial shrubs, lawns, walls, walkways and permanent structures are improvements to real property, so you perform a real property contract, pay tax on the nursery stock and hardscape when you buy it, and charge the customer no tax.

Source: Florida DOR FAQ on lawn care services and GT-800067.

Mobile homes: read the decal before you write the estimate

Florida decides mobile home work by the decal on the home. An RP decal means real property: pay tax on your materials, charge the customer nothing. An MH decal, or no decal at all, means tangible personal property: buy the materials for resale and charge tax on the entire bill including labor, unless the job used no parts. On an MH home that treatment reaches work you would normally call real property, including the roof, the plumbing and the central air conditioning.

Source: Florida DOR GT-800067.

Which rate, and the $5,000 cap that does not apply to services

The state rate is 6%. Most counties add a discretionary sales surtax, and the rate that applies is the one for the county where the goods or services are delivered, not where your shop is. For 2026 that means roughly 7% in Miami-Dade, Broward and Pinellas, 7.5% in Hillsborough and Duval, and 6.5% in Orange and Lee. Palm Beach adopted a 0.5% surtax effective January 1, 2026, taking it to 6.5%. A handful of counties, Citrus among them, impose no surtax at all.

The surtax cap trips people up. Surtax applies only to the first $5,000 of the sale of an item of tangible personal property, so a $12,000 machine you sell and install carries 6% on the full price and surtax on $5,000. That cap explicitly does not apply to sales of services. A $12,000 commercial janitorial contract carries surtax on the whole $12,000.

Source: DR-15DSS, Discretionary Sales Surtax for 2026 and GT-800019.

Exempt customers and public jobs

You cannot borrow a customer's exemption to buy materials for a real property contract. If a church, school or government body wants the materials tax free, it has to buy them itself: its own purchase order and exemption certificate, payment made directly to the vendor, an invoice in its name, and title and risk of loss taken at the jobsite on delivery. Government entities also have to issue a Certificate of Entitlement to each vendor and contractor on a public works job.

Taxable services work the ordinary way. A commercial cleaning or pest control sale to an exempt entity is exempt if you hold a copy of its Consumer's Certificate of Exemption (Form DR-14) and the entity pays directly. Pest control billed to the landlord of a nonresidential building stays taxable even when the tenant is exempt.

Source: Florida DOR GT-800067 and GT-800026.