Texas sales tax on lawn care, landscaping and pest control: Comptroller Pubs 94-112 and 94-114

Two Texas Comptroller publications govern sales tax on the services lawn, landscape and pest control businesses sell. Publication 94-112 covers landscaping and lawn care. Publication 94-114 covers pest control. They overlap on one rule, the 5 percent threshold for mixed charges, and diverge on everything else, including whether the $5,000 self-employed exemption applies at all. This guide quotes both publications as they read today and stops where they stop.

Who is telling you this, and why: Fieldwynn is a field-service app for small lawn and landscape crews, we are building it, and it has not launched. The next step at the foot of this page is an early-access email ask, not a purchase. Read the page as a funnel rather than a disinterested verdict. The Comptroller figures below are quoted from the two publications and linked back to them, which is the part that holds whoever ends up running your route.

What Publication 94-112 says is taxable: lawn care and landscaping

The Comptroller’s Publication 94-112 names the following as taxable landscaping and lawn care services:

• Planting, transplanting, relocating and removing indoor or outdoor plants
• Identifying, preventing or curing plant diseases
• Pruning, bracing, spraying, fertilizing and watering plants
• Planting, mowing, trimming and edging grass or other ground cover
• Planting and maintaining flower gardens
• Trimming, spraying and maintaining trees

If your route includes any of those, the publication says to collect state sales tax plus any local tax on the total charge for the taxable work.

What Publication 94-112 says is not taxable

The same publication carves out a short list of services that are not taxable:

• Mowing pipeline or highway rights-of-way
• Trimming trees away from power lines
• Harvesting, cultivating, mowing and fertilizing farm or forest land
• Mowing cemeteries

The distinction is not about the size of the client or the size of the check. It is about the nature of the work. Rights-of-way mowing and agricultural land work sit outside the taxable list; a residential lawn on the same route does not.

In a separate section, Publication 94-112 also states that the professional services of landscape designers and architects are not subject to sales and use tax, naming consultations, research and the preparation of design plans as examples. That nontaxable treatment covers the design work, not the installation or planting that follows it. A company that designs a landscape plan and then plants it is performing one nontaxable service and one taxable service on the same job, which is where the invoice-separation rule covered further down comes in.

The $5,000 self-employed exemption and its pest control exclusion

Publication 94-112 names one exemption that solo operators ask about. Lawn care and landscaping, other than pest control services requiring a license, are nontaxable when done by a self-employed individual who does the actual lawn care or landscaping services, has no employees, partners or other persons providing the services, and has gross receipts from the services of $5,000 or less during the most recent four calendar quarters.

Three conditions, and all three must hold at once. The individual personally does the work. No one else provides the services. Gross receipts stay at or below $5,000 across the trailing four quarters.

If receipts cross $5,000, the exemption ends and the provider must begin collecting tax on the first day of the next quarter. If receipts later fall back to $5,000 or below, the exemption resumes on the first day of the next quarter after that happens.

The exclusion in the first line is the one that catches pest operators: licensed pest control services do not qualify for this exemption even if the provider meets all three conditions. The Texas pesticide applicator license explains the credential the exclusion references.

What Publication 94-114 says about pest control

The Comptroller’s Publication 94-114 governs pest control separately. Its taxable list reads:

• Identifying or inspecting infestations, including in structures, railroad cars, ships, docks, trucks and airplanes
• Removing or treating pests or diseases of trees, shrubs or other plants
• Oral or written reports, recommendations, estimates, contracts or bids for pest prevention or control
• Preventing, controlling or eliminating pests
• Buying an extended warranty related to a pest control service, or to repair or remodeling of nonresidential real property

Notice that the list reaches the estimate and the bid, not only the service itself. Reports, recommendations, estimates, contracts and bids for pest prevention or control are all taxable under this publication.

The nontaxable pest control services are narrower and more specific:

• Services on timberland or for agricultural purposes
• Using a bird of prey to control or relocate other birds
• Removing pests or their home when cleaning a chimney
• Removing bees from a yard
• Using a live trap to remove an animal from a residence, agricultural operation or business structure
• Mechanically removing weeds from a sewer, drainage system, lake or similar area
• Installing, maintaining or using a non-pesticidal barrier to remove or prevent animal infestations
• The service bought as part of a contractor, builder or developer agreement to build a new residential structure

For the new-residential-structure exemption, the duty to keep records falls on the provider, not the buyer. Publication 94-114 states: you will need to keep records, such as an exemption certificate or other acceptable documentation from the developer, builder or contractor, to support the claim that a service is part of the agreement to build a new residential structure. Otherwise, you must collect tax for the service.

Publication 94-114 also states that your invoice must separately state the charges for the taxable and nontaxable services. The nontaxable service must be distinct, identifiable, and a type of nontaxable service that you commonly provide by itself. Separately stated expenses such as meals, calls, lodging and travel are taxable and may not be separated from the charge for the taxable service. And providers of structural pest control services must collect sales tax even when pests are not found.

One detail that applies to the nontaxable side: Publication 94-114 states that providers of nontaxable services must pay tax on the materials, supplies and equipment they use. A crew performing timberland pest control collects no tax from the client, but pays tax on the chemicals and gear it buys to do the work.

Publication 94-114 does not mention the $5,000 self-employed exemption at all. That exemption lives in Publication 94-112 and excludes pest control services requiring a license.

Where landscaping ends and construction begins

Publication 94-112 draws a line that matters for crews who install irrigation. Landscaping services do not include the construction or repair of decks, retaining walls, fences or pools, or the installation of underground sprinkler systems. Those activities are classified as new construction, or repair or remodeling of real property, and different tax rules apply.

The publication explains the real property rules that take over on the other side of that line. No tax is due on labor to repair or remodel residential real property or to build new structures (residential or nonresidential). Nonresidential real property repair or remodeling is a taxable service. How materials are taxed depends on whether the contract is lump-sum or separated: the publication references Rule 3.291 (Contractors) and Rule 3.357 for the details.

A crew that mows, plants and installs an underground sprinkler system on the same job is doing both landscaping (taxable under 94-112) and construction (subject to the real property rules above). The Comptroller directs you to separate the charges on the invoice so each type of work is taxed under the rules that apply to it. If your company does irrigation work, the Texas landscape irrigator license maps the TCEQ credential that governs who may install and service those systems.

Landscaping of new residential structures

Publication 94-112 adds a separate exclusion for new-home work. Landscaping is not taxable when purchased by a contractor or homebuilder as part of the improvement of real property with a new residence. This applies to model homes and speculative homes for residential sale, but not to non-residential structures such as sales offices. The seller must collect tax until it receives a properly completed exemption certificate from the contractor certifying that the landscaping qualifies. Landscaping materials follow the lump-sum or separated contract rules regardless.

Supplies and equipment

Publication 94-112 states that you must pay sales tax on supplies and equipment you use, naming mowers, string trimmers, wheelbarrows, gloves and tools as examples. Materials that become part of the customer’s property, such as plants, fertilizer, herbicides, and processed dirt, sand or gravel, are purchased with a resale certificate. Publication 94-114 states the same rule for pest control providers: you pay tax on materials, supplies and equipment you use in nontaxable services.

Separating charges on an invoice: the 5 percent rule

Both publications share one rule about mixed invoices. If you perform both taxable and nontaxable services and the nontaxable charges are not billed separately, the total is presumed taxable if the taxable portion is greater than 5 percent of the total price. The seller or the customer can rebut that presumption with documentary evidence, but the simpler path is to break the invoice into separate lines.

Publication 94-112 says it directly: your invoices or contracts should clearly identify the services you perform. A single-line “lawn and tree service” charge that bundles taxable mowing with nontaxable rights-of-way mowing risks the entire charge being treated as taxable. Separate lines, with each service identified, keep the nontaxable portion clear.

The service invoice template carries per-line taxable flags, so you can mark each service line as taxable or nontaxable and let the template calculate accordingly. The pest control invoice template applies one aggregate tax rate to the whole subtotal rather than flagging individual lines. If your pest control invoices mix taxable and nontaxable services, the service invoice template is the one that separates the charges the way Publication 94-114 requires.

From the published rule to a route

This page has quoted what two Comptroller publications say about which services are taxable and which are not. It has not told you what to do, because what to do depends on your specific services, your local tax rate, your entity type and your accountant’s reading of the rule. The publications cite the underlying statutes and rules (Tax Code Sections 151.0048, 151.0101 and 151.347, and Rules 3.291, 3.356 and 3.357, among others), and those are the documents that govern when the Comptroller or the publication is ambiguous.

When you are ready to run the route, scheduling, billing and the tax line that goes on every invoice, Fieldwynn is the field-service app we are building to carry that back-office load for a small crew: focused in the field, powerful in the back office. It has not launched, so the next step below is an early-access email ask, and the calculators and the tax facts stay free either way.