The answer depends on what you’re actually selling. If you’re selling products and installing them, the labor is usually taxable along with the materials. If you’re providing a pure service without selling goods, the labor is often not taxable. But the details vary by state and by the type of work you do.

Most states tax labor when it’s bundled with selling tangible personal property. Sell a water heater and install it? The whole transaction including installation is taxable in most places. Sell a set of tires and mount them? Same deal. The installation is considered part of the retail sale.

Virginia handles contractors doing real property improvements differently. If you’re building something attached to a building or land, like installing a deck or remodeling a kitchen, you’re considered the consumer of the materials. You pay sales tax when you buy the materials, but you don’t collect sales tax from your customer on the total contract price. The labor isn’t separately taxed because the entire job is treated as a service contract rather than a retail sale.

This matters for how you structure invoices. Some businesses can separate labor from materials to reduce the taxable portion of a sale. Others can’t because the state treats the whole transaction as one taxable event. Getting this wrong means either overcharging customers or owing back taxes you never collected.

The lines get blurry in certain situations. Auto shops replacing a part typically charge tax on everything, but pure diagnostic labor might be exempt. HVAC companies installing a new unit could be taxable as a retail sale or exempt as a real property improvement depending on how the work is classified. Appliance stores delivering and installing usually collect tax on the whole amount because it’s clearly a retail transaction.

Contractors and trades businesses run into this question constantly because the rules depend on what kind of work you’re doing and how the state classifies it. What’s exempt in Virginia could be fully taxable in Maryland or North Carolina.

If you’re not sure how to handle sales tax on your invoices, get it figured out before you have years of transactions to fix. Setting things up correctly from the start costs far less than discovering you owe the state money you never charged your customers.