Self-Employed House Cleaner Tax Deductions: Mileage and Supplies

A self-employed house cleaner’s tax deductions are the ordinary costs of running the business — mileage between jobs, cleaning supplies and equipment, a home office, insurance, bonding, marketing, contractor pay, retirement contributions, and health insurance premiums. You report them on Schedule C (Form 1040), and every dollar you deduct is a dollar that isn’t taxed as income and isn’t hit with self-employment tax. Miss the deductions and you pay tax on gross revenue instead of profit.

Mileage Between Jobs

Driving is usually the largest single deduction. You have two ways to claim it.

The standard mileage rate for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile driven for business.¹ Drive 15,000 business miles and you have a $10,875 deduction without producing a single gas receipt.

The actual expense method has you track everything you spend on the vehicle for the year — fuel, oil, tires, insurance, registration, repairs — then deduct the business-use percentage. If 75% of your total miles were for work, 75% of those costs come off. This method also allows depreciation on the vehicle; the standard rate does not.

Pick your method the first year you use the vehicle for business. Starting with the standard rate leaves you free to switch to actual later. Starting with actual expenses and claiming depreciation generally locks you out of switching back.²

Two boundaries to know. Driving from home to your first client is commuting and isn’t deductible — unless you have a qualifying home office, in which case that first trip becomes business travel. Trips between clients during the day are always deductible. Parking and tolls on business trips come off on top of whichever mileage method you chose.²

Keep a mileage log. Date, destination, business purpose, miles. A phone app is fine; a notebook is fine. Without it you have nothing to show in an audit.

Supplies and Cleaning Equipment

Cleaning products, rags, sponges, gloves, and trash bags are supplies. Anything used up within a year gets expensed the year you buy it.³ Put these purchases on a dedicated business card and the tracking does itself.

Equipment that lasts longer than a year — a commercial vacuum, a steam cleaner, a carpet extractor — normally has to be depreciated over several years.⁴ Three provisions let you skip the depreciation schedule and write off the full cost in year one.

Section 179

Section 179 allows an immediate deduction for qualifying business equipment, up to $2,560,000 for 2026. A cleaner won’t approach that ceiling, but the rule matters for the bigger items. If you buy an SUV used primarily for the business, the Section 179 deduction on that vehicle is capped at $32,000. Business use has to exceed 50%.

Bonus Depreciation

The One Big, Beautiful Bill signed in 2025 restored 100% bonus depreciation on a permanent basis for qualifying property acquired after January 19, 2025.⁵ A $1,200 commercial vacuum bought in 2026 comes off entirely in 2026.

De Minimis Safe Harbor

For smaller items, the de minimis safe harbor election lets you expense anything costing $2,500 or less per invoice without capitalizing it. Sole proprietors without audited financials use the $2,500 threshold. The limit applies per item, not per year — a $400 handheld steamer and a $200 pressure washer attachment each qualify on their own. You make the election on your return each year.

Home Office

Handle your scheduling, invoicing, and bookkeeping from a dedicated space at home and you can deduct that space. The IRS requires two things: regular and exclusive business use, and that the space be your principal place of business. The kitchen table doesn’t qualify. A spare bedroom used only for administrative work does.⁶

The simplified method pays $5 per square foot of dedicated office space, up to 300 square feet, for a maximum of $1,500. No home-expense receipts needed.⁶ The regular method takes the office’s percentage of your home’s total square footage and applies it to your actual rent or mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, and repairs. More work, often a bigger number.

The other payoff is the mileage rule. With a qualifying home office, your first trip to a client each morning stops being a nondeductible commute and becomes deductible business travel. For a cleaner driving 30 miles to the first job daily, that alone adds thousands of miles a year.

Phone and Internet

A phone line used only for business is fully deductible. Use one cell phone for both work and personal calls and only the business share comes off. Same rule for internet. A reasonable estimate, like tracking business use for a month, is enough to support the split.

Insurance, Licenses, Marketing, and Training

Running a legitimate cleaning operation involves a stack of recurring costs, all deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses:

Liability insurance premiums — full amount.
Surety bonding costs — full amount.
Professional fees paid to a CPA or tax preparer for your Schedule C, or to a lawyer to draft a service agreement or form an LLC.
Business licenses and permits, whatever your city or county charges.
Bank fees on your business account, including transaction and payment processing charges.

Marketing is fully deductible. Business cards, flyers, a website, social media ads. A uniform or branded t-shirt worn only for work counts too.

Training that maintains or improves the skills you already use is deductible. A chemical safety course or a specialty floor-care certification qualifies. A course in something unrelated to cleaning does not.

Paying Help

Once you bring in extra hands, how you classify them controls what you owe. An independent contractor — someone who decides when and how the work gets done — gets paid on a 1099-NEC. For tax years beginning after 2025, the filing threshold is $2,000 or more paid to a contractor during the year, up from $600.⁷ Contractor payments come off on Schedule C as contract labor.

Classify wrong and you own the fallout: unpaid payroll taxes, penalties, potentially back wages. The IRS looks at how much control you have over how the work is done, whether the worker can profit or lose money independently, and how permanent the relationship is. If you set their schedule, hand them your supplies, and they clean only for you, the IRS is likely to call that person an employee.

Retirement Contributions

You don’t get an employer match, but you can shelter serious money in a retirement plan. These deductions are taken above the line on your personal return, so they reduce adjusted gross income directly.

A SEP IRA lets you contribute up to 25% of net self-employment earnings, with a 2026 cap of $72,000.⁸ Setup is simple. You have until your tax filing deadline, including extensions, to fund it for the prior year.

A solo 401(k) is more flexible. In 2026 you can defer up to $24,500 as the employee, plus up to 25% of net self-employment earnings as an employer profit-sharing contribution, combined maximum $72,000 under age 50. Catch-up is $8,000 if you’re 50 to 59 or 64 and older, and $11,250 if you’re 60 through 63.⁹ Slightly more paperwork than a SEP, but lower earners can shelter more because of the flat employee deferral.

Health Insurance Premiums

Pay for your own health coverage and you can deduct 100% of the premiums for yourself, your spouse, your dependents, and any child under 27. Medical, dental, vision, and qualifying long-term care all count. The deduction goes above the line on Schedule 1, so it reduces AGI whether you itemize or not.¹⁰

Two limits. The deduction can’t exceed your net self-employment income. And you can’t claim it for any month you were eligible for an employer-subsidized plan, including through your spouse’s employer.¹⁰ Because this sits above the line rather than on Schedule C, it cuts your income tax but not your self-employment tax.

Qualified Business Income Deduction

Section 199A lets sole proprietors deduct up to 20% of qualified business income, on top of the regular Schedule C deductions.¹¹ A cleaning business is not a “specified service trade or business” under the statute — that category covers law, accounting, consulting, financial services, health care, and the like. Cleaning isn’t on the list, so the income-based restrictions that apply to those fields don’t apply to you.

For 2026, the full deduction is available if total taxable income is below roughly $200,000 single or $400,000 married filing jointly. Below those thresholds the math is simple: $60,000 of Schedule C net profit produces a $12,000 QBI deduction. It comes off on your personal return, not Schedule C, so it lowers income tax but not self-employment tax.

Self-Employment Tax and Quarterly Payments

Every deduction on this page matters twice, because Schedule C net profit is what self-employment tax is calculated on. That’s the self-employed version of Social Security and Medicare, and you pay both halves: 15.3% total.¹² You can deduct half of the SE tax above the line on your personal return, which offsets income tax but not the SE tax itself.

Nobody is withholding for you, so the IRS wants quarterly estimated payments. You generally owe them if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year after withholding and refundable credits.¹³ For 2026 the due dates are April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15, 2027.

Miss a deadline and you get an underpayment penalty even if the return itself pays in full. To avoid it, pay at least 90% of the current year’s tax through the quarterly payments, or 100% of last year’s tax (110% if last year’s AGI was over $150,000).¹³ The prior-year safe harbor is often the easiest target when your income swings by season, because you already know the number.

Records That Back Up the Deductions

Every deduction here is worth nothing without proof. The IRS doesn’t dictate a format; the habit is what matters. A dedicated business bank account and credit card do most of the work automatically. A mileage app captures trips with GPS. A folder for the paper receipts covers what’s left.

Keep records at least three years from the date you file, or from the due date, whichever is later. For depreciated equipment or a vehicle, keep the records as long as you own the asset plus three years after you dispose of it.

1
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Sets 2026 Business Standard Mileage Rate at 72.5 Cents Per Mile, Up 2.5 Cents
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Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 510, Business Use of Car
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Internal Revenue Service. Deducting Business Supply Expenses
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Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 704, Depreciation
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Internal Revenue Service. Treasury, IRS Issue Guidance on the Additional First Year Depreciation Deduction Amended as Part of the One Big Beautiful Bill
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Internal Revenue Service. Simplified Option for Home Office Deduction
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 1099 NEC and Independent Contractors
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Internal Revenue Service. SEP Contribution Limits (Including Grandfathered SARSEPs)
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Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 7206
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 199A – Qualified Business Income
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Internal Revenue Service. Self-Employment Tax (Social Security and Medicare Taxes)
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Internal Revenue Service. Estimated Tax