Sales tax, estimated taxes, paying subcontractors, pricing a service call and getting paid on time. Written for owners running a small crew in the US and Canada, with the official sources linked.
For payments made in 2026, the US reporting threshold for Form 1099-NEC went from $600 to $2,000. Here is what to collect before you pay a sub, what to file after the year ends, and how Canada's T5018 works for construction businesses.
Size a deposit from the material you have to buy and how long the job runs. Set terms that match who the client is, invoice before you leave, and follow up in a fixed order. Liens and late fees are real tools, but only if you set them up before the work starts.
Once your taxable revenue passes $30,000 over four calendar quarters, you have to register and charge GST or HST on your work. What follows is how the test works, the rate in each province and territory, what your invoices must show, and when the quick method makes filing simpler.
Start from what an hour of your billable time really costs, then pick a call fee that tells the customer exactly what they are paying for. The math fits on a calculator and the phone answer fits in two sentences.
Nobody withholds tax from the checks your clients hand you, so the IRS expects you to pay it four times a year. Here are the 2026 dates, the rules that keep you clear of a penalty, and a simple way to set the money aside as it comes in.
It depends on the state, and within a state it depends on what you worked on and how you wrote the invoice. Here is how to sort any job into the right bucket, with four states that show how far apart the rules are.
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