How do we hire a nanny, au pair or cleaner?

If you hire a nanny yourself, you’re usually a household employer, with tax and paperwork duties known as the “nanny tax”. Several states, including New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois, add their own rights for domestic workers. Cleaners from a company and carers in their own homes usually aren’t your employees.

Three ways to get help

The nanny tax

• Social Security and Medicare: if you pay one household employee $3,000 or more in cash in 2026, all their cash pay counts. You pay 6.2% Social Security (up to $184,500 of wages) and 1.45% Medicare, and withhold the same from their pay, or pay their share yourself. Food and lodging don’t count as cash wages
• Federal unemployment (FUTA): if you pay $1,000 or more in cash to household employees in any calendar quarter of 2025 or 2026, you owe 6% of the first $7,000 per worker. A credit of up to 5.4% for paying state unemployment tax usually brings it to 0.6%
• Income tax: you don’t have to withhold it, but can if your employee asks and you agree
• Not counted: pay to your spouse, your child under 21, your parent (with some exceptions), or a worker under 18 whose main job isn’t household work, such as a student babysitter
• Paperwork: get an EIN, complete Form I-9 to check their right to work by their first day, give a Form W-2 by 1 February 2027, and file Schedule H with your 2026 Form 1040 (or 1040-NR) by 15 April 2027. You can raise your own withholding or estimated tax to cover it
• State duties: check with your state about unemployment tax and whether you need workers’ compensation insurance

Minimum wage and overtime

Federal law (the FLSA) covers domestic workers: at least the minimum wage, and overtime at time and a half after 40 hours a week. A live-in worker is entitled to the minimum wage but not federal overtime, though state law may add it. Pay at least the highest of the federal, state and city rate.

State domestic workers’ rights

• New York: overtime after 40 hours a week, or 44 for a live-in worker; a 24-hour day of rest every week, or overtime if they agree to work it; and 3 paid days of rest a year after a year with you
• California: nannies and carers who mainly supervise, feed and dress children get overtime after 9 hours a day or 45 a week. Housekeepers and other domestic workers get overtime under the state wage order, generally after 8 hours a day or 40 a week
• Massachusetts: for 40 hours a week or more, at least 24 hours of rest in a row each week and 48 in a row each month. From 16 hours a week you must give written details of pay, hours, duties and notice. A live-in worker dismissed without cause gets written notice and 30 days’ lodging, or two weeks’ pay
• Illinois: domestic workers are covered by the state minimum wage law, including overtime, and must get 24 hours of rest in every 7 days
• In other states, check the state labour department. Put everything in a written contract: hours, duties, pay, overtime, holidays, sick days, notice, and what happens when you travel

Au pairs (J-1)

Au pairs come through State Department-designated sponsor agencies on a J-1 visa. They’re aged 18 to 26, live with you for 12 months (extendable by 6, 9 or 12 months), and study for at least 6 credits.

• Host parents must be US citizens or green card holders. Most families on work visas can’t host until they have a green card
• Hours: no more than 10 hours a day and 45 a week of childcare. At least one and a half days off a week, one full weekend a month and two weeks’ paid holiday
• Pay: a weekly stipend based on 45 hours, in line with federal wage law. Agencies quote a State Department minimum of $195.75 a week (about £150), plus a private room, meals and up to $500 towards study
• Limits: no placement with a baby under 3 months unless a parent or responsible adult is home, and for children under 2 the au pair needs at least 200 hours of infant care experience
• The State Department has said it’s premature to comment on a possible new au pair rule, so check the programme page before you sign

Checks before you hire

• Call at least two references and check experience with children of the same age
• Ask about CPR and first aid training
• Complete Form I-9 with them; it is unlawful to knowingly hire someone who can’t legally work in the US
• Agree a trial period and a written contract

Cleaners and other help

A cleaner sent by a company is the company’s employee. An independent cleaner who brings their own equipment and works for several households may be self-employed, but if you control not just what they do but how they do it, they may be your employee under IRS rules, however you describe it. If you pay them $3,000 or more in cash in a year as an employee, the nanny tax applies. Paying a nanny properly also matters for the childcare tax breaks: to claim them you need the carer’s tax number. See childcare and holiday care.