By StartBusinessByStatePublisher: Robert SmithResearch process
Original research · LegiScan living tracker · As of October 15, 2026 · Distinct from the Q3 Statehouse Licensing Index · Not legal advice If new tax rules push you to formalize your business, check LLC cost by state before you register.
This is a legislation / bills tracker — curated session bills that would change sales tax on services (and, on the companion table, contractor/trade license thresholds or scope) — not a static directory of which states already tax services (Avalara and similar own that framing). After a fresh LegiScan pull and editorial screen, we publish 9 curated sales-tax bills (Introduced 8, Failed 1) and 22 curated license threshold/scope bills (Passed 11, Introduced 10, Vetoed 1) across 19 states as of October 15, 2026 (quarterly refresh; first published September 16, 2026). Not legal advice; bill status changes — verify the LegiScan/state link before acting.
Looking for the state charge to form or maintain an LLC? Our 2026 state business fee-change tracker lists confirmed LLC filing and annual-cost changes, with effective dates and official sources.
- Workers’ comp threshold bills by state — who-must-carry / employee-count / LLC-officer / contractor WC-proof / PEO tracker (October 15, 2026 quarterly refresh: still current, no new primary bills).
- Data center tax break tracker — every 2025-26 state bill that adds, cuts or puts conditions on data center tax breaks, plus laws that protect electric customers.
- Algorithmic pricing and rent algorithm laws by state: state laws and 2025-26 bills on rent-setting software and surveillance pricing.
- This page — sales tax on services (especially personal services, cleaning, landscaping, HVAC installation, daycare, salon) and contractor/trade threshold or scope bills (hour/fee/exemption/statewide mobile-food rules, landscape scope, new occupational gates). Unit of analysis = would this change what you charge tax on, or who needs which license?
LegiScan data is licensed CC BY 4.0. Pair sales-tax rows with your state pricing plans; pair license rows with the matching industry guide. For current WC employee thresholds (not bills), see workers’ comp requirements by state.
Key findings
- Sales-tax action is sparse and mostly pending. Curated sales-tax bills sit in NE, NY, RI, TX, VA, WA. Virginia proposals explicitly name residential landscaping and cleaning when paid by a homeowner; New York would exempt basic salon/barber charges; Texas would temporarily exempt certain residential HVAC installs; Rhode Island would exempt licensed child care centers. Nebraska’s broad “impose tax on services” effort failed.
- License threshold/scope bills are concentrated, not a 50-state wave. Curated license bills sit in AL, AZ, CA, HI, IL, KS, KY, MO, NJ, OK, OR, PA, SD. Enacted examples include Oregon landscape contracting scope (SB865), Oklahoma roofing registration and Food Truck Freedom Act, Alabama statewide food-truck inspection reciprocity, Kansas child-care fee/waiver changes, and Alabama’s Esthetics Licensure Compact (listed once as reciprocity — not a salon docket dump).
- New in the October 15, 2026 refresh: two California laws. SB1363 (chaptered September 14, 2026) requires partnerships and LLCs that run a barbering/cosmetology establishment to hold a Board establishment license, and ties an LLC’s or corporation’s establishment license to good standing with the Secretary of State. AB190 (chaptered September 18, 2026) narrows, until October 1, 2027, which child care staff must complete the 15-hour health and safety training. Both are licensing-requirement changes, not volume.
- Pending can still matter for planning. Hawaii’s nail-tech license exemption, Illinois hour-threshold cuts, Missouri/New Jersey statewide food-truck credentials, and New Jersey landscape professional licensure are introduced only as of this date.
- Inclusion criteria. Inclusion here requires a clear tax-base, hour/fee/exemption, scope, statewide mobile-food, or new-occupational-gate signal for our tracked trades.
- WC tracker needed no table rewrite this quarter. The October 15, 2026 re-pull found no new primary WC-threshold bills beyond the published nine on workers’ comp threshold bills by state; statuses unchanged. Cross-link both living trackers.
Updating your cleaning quotes and invoices?
After checking which taxes apply, put the scope, customer price and payment terms in writing. The cleaning guide covers the contract setup.
Sales tax on services — curated tracker
Inclusion: title or official description indicates a change to sales/use tax on services that hits cleaning, landscaping, HVAC installation/repair, daycare, salon/personal care, food service, or a broad “taxable services / personal services” base that names those trades. Failed high-impact proposals may appear with status labeled Failed. Motor-fuel, cigarette, hotel-only, and pure goods exemptions are excluded.
| State | Bill | Status | Status date | Session | Trade focus | Impact | What we screened |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia | VA HB889 | Introduced | 2024-01-09 | 2025 Regular Session | cleaning/landscaping/personal | st impose personal home services | Retail Sales and Use tax; levies tax on following services: admissions, charges for recreation, etc. Would levy retail sales tax on nonmedical personal services and on residential home repair/maintenance, landscaping, or cleaning when paid by a homeowner — directly relevant to cleaning and landscaping operators. Pending. |
| Virginia | VA HB1755 | Introduced | 2025-01-05 | 2025 Regular Session | cleaning/landscaping/personal | st impose personal home services | Sales and use tax on services and digital personal property. Companion-style services-tax proposal: personal services plus residential landscaping/cleaning when paid by a homeowner; also digital services. Pending. |
| Virginia | VA SB730 | Introduced | 2026-01-15 | 2026 Regular Regular Session | services broadly | st expand taxable services | Sales & use tax on taxable services & digital personal property; taxes levied in certain districts. Would expand the base to taxable services and digital personal property (rate decrease paired with base expansion). Pending transportation-district companion HB900. |
| Virginia | VA HB900 | Introduced | 2026-01-13 | 2026 Regular Regular Session | services broadly | st expand taxable services | Sales & use tax on taxable services & digital personal property; taxes levied in certain districts. House companion to SB730 on taxable services / digital personal property. Pending. |
| New York | NY S10508 | Introduced | 2026-05-15 | 2025-2026 General Assembly | salon | st salon exemption | Exempts from the payment of sales tax charges for haircuts and basic barbering and cosmetology services. Would exempt haircuts and basic barbering/cosmetology charges from sales tax. Pending — citeable for salon operators. |
| Texas | TX SB214 | Introduced | 2024-11-12 | 89th Legislature Regular Session | hvac | st hvac exemption | Relating to a temporary exemption from sales and use taxes for certain residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems and installation services. Temporary sales/use tax exemption for certain residential HVAC systems and installation services. Pending. |
| Rhode Island | RI S2840 | Introduced | 2026-03-04 | 2026 Regular Session | daycare | st daycare exemption | Exempts from the sales tax licensed child care centers. Would exempt licensed child care centers from sales tax. Pending. |
| Nebraska | NE LB169 | Failed | 2026-04-17 | 109th Legislature | services broadly | st impose services failed | Eliminate certain sales and use tax exemptions and impose sales and use tax on certain services Failed proposal to eliminate some exemptions and impose sales/use tax on certain services — included as a high-impact near-miss, not current law. |
| Washington | WA HB2424 | Introduced | 2026-01-13 | 2025-2026 Regular Session | staffing/PEO-adjacent | st staffing exemption | Exempting temporary staffing services from retail sales tax. Would exempt temporary staffing services from retail sales tax — relevant where PEOs/temp labor support cleaning, landscaping, or events. Pending. |
Contractor & trade license threshold / scope — curated tracker
Inclusion: for cleaning, landscaping/tree, HVAC/mechanical/home-improvement/roofing, daycare, salon/barber/nail, or food-truck/mobile food — a bill that changes who must be licensed, a dollar/hour/capacity threshold, scope of work, statewide mobile-food credentials, fee/waiver thresholds, license exemptions, or reciprocity/compact adoption with clear trade impact. Exclusion: appropriations, honorary resolutions, and generic “touching a trade” volume already covered by the licensing index.
| State | Bill | Status | Status date | Session | Trade focus | Impact | What we screened |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oregon | OR SB865 | Passed | 2025-06-06 | 2025 Legislative Measures | landscaping | lic landscape scope | Relating to work performed by a landscape contracting business; and prescribing an effective date. Expands work that requires a Landscape Contractors Board license; limited water-feature alternative via CCB. Scope change, not a WC employee-count bill. |
| Oklahoma | OK HB1628 | Passed | 2025-05-28 | 2025 Regular Session | home-services contractor | lic roofing registration | Roofing Contractor Registration Act; denial of registration or endorsement; residential roofer endorsement provisions; requirements; codification; effective date. Roofing Contractor Registration Act — denial/endorsement rules for residential roofers (home-services contractor registration). |
| Oklahoma | OK HB3800 | Passed | 2026-05-12 | 2026 Regular Session | home-services contractor | lic roofing registration | Roofing contractors; Roofing Contractor Registration Act; definitions; violations; fees; fines; application; repealer; effective date. Further Roofing Contractor Registration Act changes (definitions, fees/fines, application). |
| Oklahoma | OK HB1076 | Passed | 2025-05-05 | 2025 Regular Session | food-truck | lic foodtruck preemption | Public health and safety; creating the Food Truck Freedom Act; State Commissioner of Health; rules; local authorities; administrative hearing; penalties; appeals process; definitions; terms; food establishment license; mobile food vendors; locations; effective date. Food Truck Freedom Act — statewide health-rule framework limiting patchwork local barriers for mobile food vendors. |
| Alabama | AL SB197 | Passed | 2026-04-09 | 2026 Regular Session | food-truck | lic foodtruck statewide inspection | Food trucks and other mobile food vendors; require one health inspection and fire inspection to apply statewide One health + fire inspection applies statewide for food trucks/mobile food vendors — reduces multi-jurisdiction inspection burden. |
| Kansas | KS HB2045 | Passed | 2025-04-11 | 2025-2026 Regular Session | daycare | lic daycare fees waivers | Reducing certain license fees and training requirements for child care staff, creating a process for day care facility licensees to apply for temporary waiver of certain statutory requirements, authorizing the secretary of health and environment to develop and operate pilot programs to increase child care availability or capacity, transferring certain child care programs to the Kansas office of early childhood and creating day care licensing duties of the director of early childhood. Reduces some child-care staff license fees/training requirements; temporary statutory waivers; capacity pilots. |
| California | CA AB753 | Passed | 2025-10-01 | 2025-2026 Regular Session | daycare | lic daycare teachers | Childcare: facility licensure: teacher requirements. Childcare facility licensure and teacher requirements — staffing/credential threshold for centers. |
| California | CA SB1363 | Passed | 2026-09-14 | 2025-2026 Regular Session | salon | lic salon establishment entity | Barbering and cosmetology. Enacted (Ch. 233, Statutes of 2026). Requires partnerships and LLCs that operate a barbering/cosmetology establishment to obtain a Board establishment license; a corporation or LLC operating one must be registered and in good standing with the Secretary of State, or its license can be suspended. Also requires a licensed person in charge whenever services are performed, adds Board approval for apprenticeship sponsors, and extends the Board to January 1, 2031. Who-must-be-licensed change. Check the chaptered text for operative dates. See the California salon guide and California LLC setup. |
| California | CA AB190 | Passed | 2026-09-18 | 2025-2026 Regular Session | daycare | lic daycare training presence | Early care and education. Enacted budget trailer bill (Ch. 257, Statutes of 2026; takes effect immediately). Until October 1, 2027, the 15-hour pediatric health and safety training is required of at least one director or teacher at each child care center and of each family child care home licensee who provides care, instead of all care staff; it also changes family child care home licensee-presence and substitute rules and drops temporary-absence reporting. Included for these licensing-requirement changes, not for its appropriations. See the California daycare guide and California daycare insurance. |
| Hawaii | HI SB1621 | Introduced | 2025-01-23 | 2025 Regular Session | salon | lic salon exemption | Relating To Nail Technicians. Would exempt nail technicians from licensing requirements — a license-threshold repeal, not a compact volume bill. Pending. |
| Illinois | IL HB3854 | Introduced | 2025-02-07 | 104th General Assembly | salon | lic salon hours threshold | BARBER/COSMETOLOGY-EDUCATION Would reduce education/training hour thresholds for barber/cosmetology/esthetics/nail licenses. Pending (companion HB5581). |
| Illinois | IL HB5581 | Introduced | 2026-02-06 | 104th General Assembly | salon | lic salon hours threshold | BARBER/COSMETOLOGY-EDUCATION Companion hour-reduction proposal for barber/cosmetology/esthetics/nail licenses. Pending. |
| Kentucky | KY HB497 | Introduced | 2025-02-13 | 2025 Regular Session | salon | lic salon reciprocity | AN ACT relating to cosmetology, esthetics, and nail technology. Reciprocal licensing and work-experience pathways for cosmetologists, estheticians, and nail technicians. Pending. |
| Missouri | MO SB1631 | Introduced | 2026-02-05 | 2026 Regular Session | food-truck | lic foodtruck statewide | Establishes a statewide mobile food vendor license Statewide mobile food vendor license — would create a single statewide credential path. Pending. |
| New Jersey | NJ S3150 | Introduced | 2026-01-13 | 2026-2027 Regular Session | landscaping | lic landscape new license | Provides for licensure of landscape professionals and registration of professional landscaping businesses. Would create licensure of landscape professionals and registration of landscaping businesses — new occupational gate. Pending (A3908 companion). |
| New Jersey | NJ A3908 | Introduced | 2026-01-13 | 2026-2027 Regular Session | landscaping | lic landscape new license | Provides for licensure of landscape professionals and registration of professional landscaping businesses. Assembly companion to S3150 (landscape professional licensure / business registration). Pending. |
| New Jersey | NJ S3555 | Introduced | 2026-02-19 | 2026-2027 Regular Session | food-truck | lic foodtruck statewide | Requires DOH to establish Statewide standardized requirements for licensure and operations of mobile food vendors; designated as "Streamlined Food Truck Licensure Act." Streamlined Food Truck Licensure Act — statewide standardized licensure/operations for mobile food vendors. Pending. |
| Kentucky | KY HB300 | Introduced | 2026-01-09 | 2026 Regular Session | contractor/HVAC-adjacent | lic contractor new license | AN ACT relating to contractors. Would establish contractor licensing under Housing, Buildings and Construction and prohibit unlicensed contracting. Pending. |
| Pennsylvania | PA SB1324 | Introduced | 2026-05-04 | 2025-2026 Regular Session | home-services contractor | lic home improvement registration | Further providing for definitions, for registration of contractors, for procedures for registration as a contractor, for application fees, for home improvement contracts and for home improvement fraud; and making a repeal. Amends Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act — contractor registration definitions/procedures. Pending. |
| Arizona | AZ HB2118 | Vetoed | 2026-06-19 | Fifty-seventh Legislature – Second Regular Session (2026) | food-truck | lic foodtruck vetoed | Mobile food vendors; licensure Mobile food vendor licensure — vetoed. Included as a high-impact near-miss for food-truck operators. |
| Alabama | AL SB163 | Passed | 2026-04-06 | 2026 Regular Session | salon | lic salon compact enacted | Alabama Board of Cosmetology and Barbering; adoption of Esthetics Licensure Compact Esthetics Licensure Compact adoption — enacted compact (high-impact reciprocity), listed once; not a volume reprint of salon dockets. |
| South Dakota | SD HB1194 | Passed | 2026-03-30 | 2026 Regular Session | salon | lic salon hours credit | Clarify authority for the Cosmetology Commission to credit work experience for educational hours for certain out-of-state licensure applicants, and to require the commission to promulgate rules therefor. Lets Cosmetology Commission credit out-of-state work experience toward educational hours — hours-threshold flexibility. |
Not legal advice. Bill titles and LegiScan descriptions are short. Confirm enrolled/chaptered text, effective dates, and local tax guidance before changing prices or license plans. A passed bill can still wait on a later effective date. Vetoed and Failed rows are near-misses, not current law.
For a related cost, see what card swipe fees on sales tax cost in each state, and the bills to stop them.
Hypothesis check — high-impact, not volume
We hypothesized that useful planning signals for service founders are concentrated enacted or pending threshold/scope/tax-base bills, while raw licensing dockets are better summarized as volume (the Q3 index). The curated set supports that: 31 bills across 19 states, with explicit inclusion rules — not another 719-row attention table.
Your next step: set up cleaning-business contracts
Downloads
- Sales-tax-on-services curated CSV (October 15, 2026; September 16 edition)
- Contractor/license threshold curated CSV (October 15, 2026; September 16 edition)
- Combined curated CSV (October 15, 2026)
- WC threshold refresh check CSV (October 15, 2026: all nine primary bills unchanged)
Suggested citation: StartBusinessByState.com — Sales Tax on Services Bills by State (Legislation Tracker). https://startbusinessbystate.com/sales-tax-on-services-bills-by-state/. Please credit and link to this page when using our compilation or analysis, and retain the original-source credits and applicable reuse terms.
What this means if you price or license a service business
For a service firm updating prices and paperwork, connect the tax check to the customer workflow. Our cleaning-business contracts guide covers written scope and terms, while landscaping agreements and payments covers recurring service and collection.
A bill is not your invoice or your license card. Start from current practice in your state, then read any row above that matches your trade. Industry walkthroughs: cleaning, landscaping, HVAC, daycare, hair salon, food truck.
For who must carry workers’ compensation today, use WC requirements by state; for session bills that would change those rules, use the WC threshold bill tracker.
Related research: property taxes by state — the other big state and local tax line for a business that owns or leases property.
Methods, inclusion rules, and limitations
As of October 15, 2026 (America/New_York); first published September 16, 2026. LegiScan Pull API getSearch / getBill, state=ALL, year=2 (current) and year=3 (recent).
Query families: sales/use tax + taxable/personal services + tracked trades; contractor/home-improvement/roofing/HVAC/landscape/daycare/salon/food-truck + license threshold, scope, exemption, reciprocity, statewide mobile-food rules; plus a WC refresh pass matching the prior threshold tracker.
Inclusion (sales tax): tax base change for services used by cleaning, landscaping, HVAC, daycare, salon, or food-truck operators, or broad personal/taxable-services proposals that name those activities. Inclusion (license): threshold, scope, exemption, fee/waiver, statewide mobile-food credential, new occupational gate, or enacted compact/reciprocity with clear trade impact.
Exclusion: licensing-volume reprints; WC medical fee schedules and appropriations; motor-fuel/tobacco/hotel-only tax bills; honorary resolutions; “touching a trade” without a threshold/scope/tax-base signal.
Funnel (October 15, 2026 refresh): same query families, 2,226 unique search hits (smaller page caps than September’s ~2,505) → same screening rules → bills whose LegiScan change hash or status moved since September 16, plus new bill IDs, reviewed by hand → 2 new license rows (CA SB1363, CA AB190) → 31 curated published rows. All 38 previously published bills had unchanged LegiScan change hashes. WC refresh: 9 primary bills unchanged; 0 new primary WC inclusions.
Limitations: LegiScan ≠ official code. Descriptions are often one line. “Passed” ≠ in force on the as-of date. D.C. is not separately scored. We will refresh on a quarterly cadence — treat the as-of date as part of the claim.
Bill data courtesy of LegiScan (CC BY 4.0). Screening and editorial notes are ours.