Sales Tax on Services in Hawaii (2026) — What's Taxable

Broad — all business activity

Yes, and more broadly than any sales-tax state — but it is not a sales tax. The Department of Taxation states plainly that "Hawaii does not have a sales tax; instead, we have the GET, which is assessed on all business activities." Service income is a business activity, so it is taxed at the 4% General Excise Tax rate plus any county surcharge. The GET is levied on the business rather than the customer: a seller may choose to visibly pass on the GET and any applicable county surcharge, but is not required to.

• Gross income from services rendered in Hawaii, taxed at 4% plus any applicable county surcharge
• Gross income from medical and dental services, taxed at the same 4% rate plus county surcharge — the Department names these explicitly, which is what a genuinely broad base looks like
• Retailing, contracting, renting, and the other business activities the Department groups under "all others" at the 4% rate

• Wholesaling, manufacturing, producing, wholesale services, and use tax on imports for resale — 0.5%
• Insurance commissions — 0.15%
• The county surcharge is added only to activities taxed at the 4.0% rate, so a 0.5% wholesale-services transaction carries no surcharge

Yes. The GET is assessed on all business activities, and the Department names medical and dental services explicitly at the 4% rate plus county surcharge. A Hawaii accounting, legal, consulting, or clinical practice owes GET on its gross income whether or not it passes the tax on to clients.

The mental model that breaks in Hawaii is “sales tax applies to goods, services are safe.” The GET is not a sales tax on the buyer; it is an excise tax on the privilege of doing business, and its base is gross income from essentially every business activity. A consultancy, a law firm, a clinic, and a landscaper are all inside it.

Who owes it. Because the tax is on the business, the business owes it whether or not it separately charged a customer. A seller may visibly pass on the GET and the county surcharge, but is not required to — which is why Hawaii invoices sometimes show a GET line and sometimes do not, with no difference in what the business owes the state.

County surcharge. Four counties have adopted a surcharge of 0.25% or 0.5% on top of the 4% rate. The Department publishes maximum pass-on rates that reach 4.7120% for the City and County of Honolulu and for Hawaii, Kauai, and Maui counties. Use the Department’s county-surcharge table for the current effective periods rather than assuming one statewide figure.

Every statement on this page traces to one of the official sources below. date_retrieved: 2026-07-30.

• Hawaii Department of Taxation — General Excise Tax (GET) Information
• Hawaii Department of Taxation — County Surcharge on General Excise and Use Tax
• Hawaii Department of Taxation — An Introduction to the General Excise Tax (brochure)

Economic nexus in Hawaii triggers when remote sellers exceed $100,000 in gross sales OR 200 or more separate transactions into Hawaii in the current or preceding calendar year — whichever is met first.

Read the full Hawaii overview for thresholds, filing frequency, marketplace facilitator rules, and registration links. Use the nexus calculator to check whether you have crossed the threshold. For background on the post-Wayfair economic nexus framework, see the pillar guide.

The general rule above is easier to apply against a real trade. These national industry guides walk the same question for three service verticals, and each one names the state-by-state differences that decide whether a given invoice is taxable:

• Salon and barber sales tax guide
  haircuts, nail services, and retail product sales — the clearest case of a personal service whose taxability flips from state to state.
• Restaurant and food service sales tax guide
  prepared food, dine-in versus takeout, delivery, and gratuities, where the service and the product are billed together.
• Construction contractor sales tax guide
  labor on real property, materials, and the residential/nonresidential split that decides taxability in several states.

• Hawaii · SaaS
  Software-as-a-service sales tax rules
• Hawaii · Digital Products
  Sales tax on digital downloads, eBooks, courses, streaming
• Hawaii · Thresholds
  Economic and transaction nexus thresholds

Compare Hawaii's services rules with nearby and similar states' services sales tax guides:

• California Services sales tax
  Services nexus, taxability, and filing rules for California.
• Florida Services sales tax
  Services nexus, taxability, and filing rules for Florida.
• Illinois Services sales tax
  Services nexus, taxability, and filing rules for Illinois.
• Maryland Services sales tax
  Services nexus, taxability, and filing rules for Maryland.
• New Jersey Services sales tax
  Services nexus, taxability, and filing rules for New Jersey.
• New Mexico Services sales tax
  Services nexus, taxability, and filing rules for New Mexico.