Can house cleaning be claimed on taxes in Canada?

Why cleaning your own home is a personal expense

The CRA treats the cost of keeping your own home clean the same way it treats groceries or home insurance: a personal living expense, not something connected to earning income. It does not matter whether you pay an individual cash, hire a cleaning company, or set up a recurring service — none of that changes the underlying rule. This surprises some homeowners who assume any household service paid for regularly and by invoice must be deductible somewhere, but a deduction has to connect to earning income or to a specific credit the tax system recognizes, and ordinary home cleaning does neither on its own.

This is true even for a landlord's own principal residence and even for a business owner whose home happens to also contain their office. The general rule and its exceptions are entirely about the purpose the space serves, not about the owner's occupation or how much of their income comes from self-employment.

Cleaning costs connected to a move — whether cleaning the home you are leaving or the home you are moving into — also do not fall under eligible moving expenses, even when the move itself qualifies for the moving expense deduction. The CRA's list of eligible moving costs covers things like transportation, storage, and temporary living expenses, but ordinary cleaning is not one of the categories it recognizes, regardless of how directly it is tied to the move.

The disability exception: attendant care

One narrow exception exists for people who qualify for the disability tax credit or who need attendant care because of a severe and prolonged impairment. In that situation, the cost of a full-time attendant or care in a facility can include a housekeeping or cleaning component as part of a broader eligible medical expense claim, but this is about care for the person, not a stand-alone cleaning deduction available to anyone. The rules around what counts and how much can be claimed are specific, and this exception does not extend to hiring a cleaner simply because you are busy or dislike the task.

A related but separate benefit worth knowing about is the home accessibility tax credit, which covers certain renovations that improve safety or accessibility for a senior or a person eligible for the disability tax credit. Routine cleaning does not qualify under this credit either, since it is aimed at physical modifications to the home rather than ongoing household services.

Self-employed home office: the business-use percentage

If you are self-employed and claim a home office, you can deduct the business-use percentage of costs that keep your whole home running, and cleaning supplies or a cleaning service can be one of those costs. The math works the same way as utilities or rent: you calculate the percentage of your home's square footage used for business, and that percentage of the cleaning cost becomes deductible, not the full amount. A home office used 15% of the time or space means 15% of the cleaning bill is a legitimate business expense, and the other 85% stays personal. Our page on deducting a home office covers the percentage calculation in more detail.

This only applies to self-employed individuals and owners of an unincorporated business claiming a home office under the standard rules; an employee working from home has a much more limited set of eligible home office expenses, and cleaning is not typically one of them.

Rental properties: cleaning is fully deductible

Cleaning a property you rent out to tenants is a different situation entirely, and the cost is fully deductible as a rental expense. Whether it is a turnover clean between tenants, a regular cleaning service for a short-term rental, or a one-time deep clean after a tenant moves out, the expense reduces your rental income the same way property management fees or repairs do. Keep the receipts and, where the cleaning company issues invoices, keep those on file the same way you would for any other rental expense, alongside the rest of the property's operating costs for the year. Our page on tax services for rental property landlords covers rental deductions like this in more depth.

The same rule applies to a short-term rental listed on a platform like Airbnb, where cleaning between guest stays is a normal and expected operating cost rather than an occasional expense. Where a host also lives in part of the property, only the portion of cleaning connected to the rented space is deductible, following the same logic as any other shared expense between personal and rental use, based on square footage or the number of rooms dedicated to guests rather than a rough guess.

If cleaning is your business, not your expense

Everything above is about claiming cleaning as an expense. If you run a cleaning business yourself, the tax questions flip entirely: what you can deduct as a business owner, how to handle GST/HST once you cross the small supplier threshold, and how to pay staff or subcontractors correctly. Our page on tax and accounting services for cleaning businesses covers that side in more detail, and we see this exact split-personal-from-business question often enough from self-employed clients and landlords that it is worth checking carefully on every return rather than assuming an all-or-nothing answer. A wrong assumption in either direction causes a problem: claiming the full personal cost overstates the deduction, while assuming nothing is deductible at all leaves a legitimate rental or home-office expense unclaimed year after year.