What does Michigan ask of a new house cleaner?
Very little at the start. Register your business name (county clerk for a sole proprietor, LARA for an LLC), buy liability insurance, and check whether your city taxes income. You don’t need a state cleaning license or a sales tax license to sell cleaning. The heavier Michigan rules arrive with your first employee: a high minimum wage, earned sick time, unemployment tax and, past a threshold, workers’ comp.
That makes Michigan cheap to enter and more expensive to grow in than most states. A solo cleaner can be legal for under $20 in most counties. A cleaner with a crew needs to build $13.73 an hour (rising to $15.00 in 2027) into every price.
Do now
- Pick your name and file it: an assumed name with your county clerk, or Articles of Organization for an LLC.
- Get an EIN from the IRS if you plan to hire or open a business bank account.
- Check whether the city you live in, or the cities you clean in, levy an income tax.
- Buy general liability insurance, and tell your auto insurer you drive to jobs.
- Set your prices with no sales tax line, then set up booking and payments.
Do when you hire
- Report each new hire within 20 days.
- Register with the Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) once you meet its wage or weeks test.
- Pay at least the state minimum wage and track earned sick time.
- Buy workers’ comp before you reach the state’s headcount or hours threshold.
This page covers the Michigan rules only. For choosing services, buying equipment and booking first homes, read our general guide on how to start a cleaning business. Still looking for a name? Try the cleaning business name generator, then search your county’s assumed name records and the state entity search before you file.
County clerk or LARA: where does a Michigan assumed name go?
It depends on who owns the business. A sole proprietor or general partnership files with the county clerk in each county where it does business. An LLC or corporation files with the Corporations Division of LARA (the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs). Both last about five years.
Sole proprietors: the county clerk
County fees are small and each county sets its own. The Wayne County Clerk, which covers Detroit, charges $16 to file. Every signature must be notarized, personal checks are not accepted (money orders and cashier’s or certified checks are), and the registration protects the name in Wayne County for five years. If you clean in Oakland or Macomb County too, ask each clerk whether you need to file there as well.
Cleaning under your own full name, such as “Maria Kowalczyk”, needs no filing. “Maria’s Spotless Homes” does.
LLCs: LARA, for $10
An LLC trades under its own registered name without any extra filing. If it wants to use a second name, it files a Certificate of Assumed Name with LARA. The certificate form (CSCL/CD 541) lists a $10 fee for an LLC ($25 for a corporation), and the name expires on December 31 of the fifth calendar year after the year you file it. So “Lakeshore Home Services LLC” could trade as “Lakeshore Maids” for $10.
A name registration is not a license, and it doesn’t protect you from claims. If you want to keep personal and business debts apart, the next question is whether an LLC is worth it.
What does a Michigan LLC cost to form and keep?
$50 to form and $25 a year. Michigan is one of the cheaper LLC states, but the yearly filing is real: miss it and the LLC can be dissolved.
Forming it
The Articles of Organization form (CSCL/CD 700) lists a nonrefundable $50 fee. LARA’s Corporations Division FAQ says you file it online through a MiLogin for Business account at the state’s corporate filing site and pay by card. The form also notes a fee waiver for LLCs where veterans hold a majority of the initial membership interests.
The annual statement
LARA’s page on annual reports and annual statements sets out the rules for LLCs:
- Fee: $25 a year, with a $50 penalty if it arrives after the due date.
- Due date: February 15 each year after the LLC is formed. An LLC formed after September 30 skips the very next February 15. Online filing opens October 15.
- If you don’t file: after a two-year grace period the LLC is dissolved or loses good standing, and you may lose the rights to its name and assumed names.
Timing tip: if you are forming in the autumn, filing on October 1 instead of September 29 pushes your first $25 statement out by a full year.
Is it worth it for a solo cleaner?
An LLC separates business debts from your personal ones. It does not pay for a scratched floor or a broken lamp: liability insurance does that. Many owners start under a county assumed name and form an LLC when they hire or take commercial work. Our guide to LLCs for cleaning businesses goes through the trade-offs in more detail.
Why don’t Michigan cleaners charge sales tax?
Because Michigan taxes goods, not services. The state’s 6% sales tax is due on sales of tangible personal property to the final consumer, and house cleaning is a service. You don’t add tax to a clean, and you don’t need a sales tax license unless you also sell products.
What Treasury says
The Michigan Department of Treasury’s sales and use tax page says businesses that sell tangible personal property to the final consumer remit 6% sales tax, and that Michigan does not allow cities or other local units to add their own sales tax. The services it names under use tax are telecommunications and hotel or motel rooms. In a 2023 bulletin, Revenue Administrative Bulletin 2023-10, Treasury repeats the general rule: sales tax applies only to sales of tangible personal property, not sales of services.
That is a real difference from neighbors such as Ohio, which taxes maid service, and from Pennsylvania, which taxes building cleaning, homes included.
Where tax still touches you
- Your supplies. You are the consumer of the vacuum, cloths and chemicals you buy, so you pay 6% on them like anyone else.
- Selling products. Treasury’s page on who needs a sales tax license says anyone selling tangible personal property to the final consumer needs one. If you start selling cleaning kits or gift baskets, register first.
So your quote is simply your price. Build it from your time and costs: the house cleaning pricing guide shows how to set hourly, flat and per-room prices, and Michigan wages (below) are the cost to watch most closely.
Which Michigan cities tax your cleaning income?
Twenty-four of them. Michigan lets cities levy their own income tax, and if you live in one or clean in one, you may owe it on top of state income tax. City business licenses, on the other hand, rarely cover cleaning.
The 24 cities
Treasury’s answer to which cities impose an income tax lists Detroit, whose taxes the state administers, and 23 cities that run their own: Albion, Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Big Rapids, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, Flint, Grayling, Hamtramck, Highland Park, Hudson, Ionia, Jackson, Lansing, Lapeer, Muskegon, Muskegon Heights, Pontiac, Port Huron, Portland, Saginaw, Springfield and Walker. The taxes can cover individual income, business income and payroll withholding.
Cities such as Troy, Livonia, Ann Arbor and Sterling Heights are not on the list. A cleaner who lives in one of them and cleans only there owes no city income tax. One who lives in Grand Rapids or cleans homes in Lansing likely does.
Detroit
The City of Detroit’s business income tax page lists 2.00% for corporations and, for partnerships, 2.40% for resident partners and 1.20% for nonresident partners. Employers with a location in Detroit, or doing business there, withhold 2.4% from residents’ wages and 1.2% from nonresidents’. If you are a sole proprietor cleaning Detroit homes, ask the city or your accountant how your net profit is taxed and which return to file.
Detroit does license some businesses, but its business licensing page lists categories such as cabarets, vendors, lodging, amusements, gas stations, pet shops and second-hand dealers, and its consumer services category covers only bathhouses, massage and tattoos. House cleaning is not on it. Other cities set their own rules, so call your city clerk and ask about home-business zoning if you will store supplies or meet staff at home.
What does your first Michigan employee cost? Wages and earned sick time
At least $13.73 an hour in 2026 and $15.00 from January 1, 2027. Earned sick time comes on top, but a brand-new small employer gets three years before those duties start. Do the math before you hire, because these numbers are higher than in most states.
The 2026 and 2027 rates
Michigan changed its minimum wage law in February 2025, and the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) minimum wage page says the rate is $13.73 from January 1, 2026 and $15.00 from January 1, 2027. LEO’s December 2025 announcement lists the other 2026 rates:
- $11.67 for minors aged 16 and 17 (85% of the minimum).
- A $4.25 training wage for new hires under 20, for their first 90 days.
- $5.49 for tipped employees, but only if they receive at least $8.24 an hour in tips. Few house cleaners average that, so plan on paying the full rate.
The law applies to employers with 2 or more employees aged 16 and older, according to LEO’s minimum wage FAQ. In practice, no Michigan cleaning company hires good people below it.
What that means for your prices
A cleaner who spends 3 hours in a home, plus 30 minutes driving, costs you 3.5 × $13.73 = $48.06 in wages for that clean in 2026, before payroll taxes, insurance and supplies. In 2027 the same visit costs 3.5 × $15.00 = $52.50. If your price for that home is $140, wages alone take more than a third. Raise prices on January 1, 2027, and tell recurring clients in November.
Earned sick time, and the new-business delay
LEO’s Earned Sick Time Act FAQ treats an employer with 10 or fewer employees as a small business. Its employees earn at least 1 hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked and can use up to 40 paid hours a year, unless you choose a higher limit. Larger employers owe up to 72 hours.
The detail most new owners miss: a small business that did not employ anyone on or before February 21, 2022 doesn’t have to comply until 3 years after the date it first employs someone. The FAQ’s example is a business that hired in October 2024, whose employees start earning sick time in October 2027. So if you hire your first cleaner in November 2026, mark November 2029 in your calendar, and set up tracking well before then.
When do Michigan cleaners need workers’ comp, a UIA account and new-hire reports?
Workers’ comp is required once you regularly employ 3 or more people at one time, or 1 person working 35 hours or more a week for 13 weeks. Unemployment tax starts once you pay $1,000 in wages in a year or have a worker in 20 different weeks. New hires are reported within 20 days.
Workers’ comp thresholds
Michigan’s Workers’ Disability Compensation Agency insurance requirements say private employers must carry coverage if they regularly employ 1 or more employees 35 hours or more a week for 13 weeks or longer during the preceding 52 weeks, or 3 or more employees at one time, part-timers included. You comply by buying insurance, self-insuring, or properly filing an exclusion form. Any employer below the thresholds can choose to be covered.
For a cleaning company, the second test bites first: three part-time cleaners on the payroll at once and you need a policy. Cleaning means ladders, wet floors and chemicals, so many owners buy it from the first hire anyway. Ask for a workers’ comp quote alongside your liability quote, and see our guide to insurance for cleaners for the other policies.
Unemployment insurance (UIA)
The UIA’s employer liability toolkit says you become liable when you pay $1,000 or more in wages in a calendar year, or have at least one worker in 20 different weeks of a calendar year. Its tax rate page sets the rate for a newly liable, non-construction employer at 2.7% for each of the first two years. The tax applies to the first $9,000 of each employee’s wages for qualifying employers, so that is at most $243 per employee per year. Employees don’t pay it.
New-hire reports
The Michigan child support program’s quick reference guide for employers says to report newly hired and rehired employees within 20 days of the date they first perform services for pay, through the Michigan New Hires Operation Center.
Employee or contractor?
Paying cleaners as 1099 contractors doesn’t end these duties if they work your schedule, with your supplies, on your checklist. Misclassification can mean back taxes and penalties. Ask an accountant before you decide, and remember that the $13.73 floor applies to employees, which is part of why some owners are tempted.
What does it cost to start cleaning houses in Michigan?
State and county fees are tiny: $16 for a Wayne County assumed name, or $50 for an LLC plus $25 a year. Insurance, supplies and, later, wages are the real costs.
Government fees below were checked on official pages on October 5, 2026. Rows marked “estimate” are our rough ranges, not quotes.
| Cost item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| County assumed name (sole proprietor) | $16 in Wayne County | Five years. Other counties set their own fee. Not needed under your own full name. |
| LLC Articles of Organization | $50 | Optional. Filed online with LARA. |
| LLC annual statement | $25 a year | Due February 15. $50 penalty if late. |
| LLC assumed name with LARA | $10 | Only if the LLC trades under a second name. |
| Sales tax license | Not needed for cleaning | Only if you sell products to consumers. |
| City income tax | Depends on profit and city | Only in the 24 cities that levy it. Not a startup fee. |
| State unemployment tax | Up to $243 per employee per year | 2.7% of the first $9,000 for new employers, once liable. |
| Workers’ comp | Get quotes | Required at 3 employees, or 1 working 35+ hours a week for 13 weeks. |
| General liability insurance | Get quotes | Compare two or three quotes with the same details. |
| Starter supply kit | $200 to $500 (estimate) | Includes 6% sales tax on what you buy. |
| Booking, scheduling and payment software | Your choice | BroomBook is $29 a month for up to 2 cleaners, with a 14-day free trial. |
A realistic minimum for a solo cleaner in Wayne County: $16 for the assumed name, a notary fee, roughly $200 to $500 of supplies (our estimate) and your first insurance payment. With no sales tax to collect, everything a client pays is your revenue, which keeps the bookkeeping simple.
Where does BroomBook fit for a Michigan cleaning business?
We make BroomBook, a scheduling, online booking and crew app for residential cleaning businesses. In Michigan the useful parts are online booking without a tax line, a crew app that tracks hours, and a payroll export for a market where wages are your biggest cost.
- No sales tax to set up. Sales tax is an optional setting, so a Michigan business leaves it off and clients see one clean price.
- Hours from clock-ins. Each cleaner gets a private link (no app download) with their jobs, checklists and clock in and out. You can correct a timesheet and the reason is kept, and hours, tips and commission export to CSV for your payroll service.
- Service area by distance or ZIP code. Handy if you want to keep bookings out of a city whose income tax you would rather not take on yet.
- Card on file, charged after the clean, through Stripe, with tips. BroomBook takes no cut of payments.
One limit to know in Michigan: BroomBook does not calculate or file city income tax, and it does not split your revenue or payroll by city for a Detroit or Grand Rapids return. It also doesn’t track earned sick time balances or calculate withholding. Your accountant or payroll service handles those from your records.
Plans are $29 a month on Solo (up to 2 cleaners) or $59 a month on Team (unlimited cleaners), with a 14-day free trial and no credit card. See how the calendar and routes work on our cleaning scheduling software page, and read how to get clients for a cleaning business for your first bookings.
Pick something other than BroomBook if
- You need automatic QuickBooks sync. BroomBook doesn’t sync with accounting software.
- You bill clients by invoice with net terms. BroomBook charges cards after the job and sends receipts.
- You want a native app from the App Store or Google Play. BroomBook runs in the phone’s browser.
- You mainly bid on commercial janitorial contracts or run a multi-trade field service company.