Plumbing side jobs are legal in some situations and not in others: our research found the right to contract work in your own name decided state by state, and sometimes city or county by city or county — and your employer's policies are a second gate.
We found no verified national rate for side work, so pricing starts from your own costs.
The fixed part is tax: net self-employment earnings of $400 or more for the year owe self-employment tax.
Is it legal for a plumber to do side jobs?
Whether a plumber may contract side work in their own name is decided state by state — and sometimes city or county by city or county.
We can't give you a national answer, and the licence that lets you work under an employer is not automatically the licence that lets you take your own jobs.
Where the journeyman-to-master ladder sits relative to contracting differs state by state: in states such as Georgia, Texas and New Jersey, the individual master licence is what lets a plumbing business contract at all, with no separate state plumbing-contractor licence.
Even the ladder's rungs move — as of September 2026, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina have a statewide plumbing licence with no journeyman rung.
Our plumbing license guide maps the apprentice–journeyman–master ladder; your board draws the line for your address.
The "handyman exemption" is the trap to clear first.
A small-job dollar threshold does not cover plumbing everywhere: Nevada's under-$1,000 exemption excludes plumbing, heating and AC work outright, Arizona's and California's under-$1,000 rules stop applying the moment a job needs a permit, and North Carolina and Oklahoma have no dollar exemption for these trades at all.
That permit question is the second half of "legal": whether a job needs a permit is part of the same state-and-local picture as licensing, and a side job that triggers one can pull the licence layer in with it.
Confirm both before you quote the job, not after.
Verify with your board — or your city
What should you charge for plumbing side work?
Start with honesty: our research found no verified figure for what side-job plumbing pays, and we won't invent one.
The free federal tables we checked don't price moonlighting work: the BLS OEWS wage tables cover wage-and-salary employees only, and the IRS and Census tables we checked publish only at sector level — specialty trade contractors as a whole, with no plumbing-only line.
What the federal data does give you is the employee baseline.
The median wage for wage-and-salary plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters was $30.67 an hour ($63,800 a year) in May 2025 (BLS OEWS, SOC 47-2152).
That table excludes the self-employed, so it never shows what a self-employed plumber bills; it is the baseline you would be stepping around, and our plumber salary page has the full tables by state.
The closest federal figure to side-job income is IRS Statistics of Income: for tax year 2023, 2,521,516 nonfarm sole-proprietor returns in specialty trade contractors reported $257.8 billion in business receipts and $40.5 billion in net income less deficit — an average of about $16,050 net per return.
Read the caveats before quoting any of it: that is every specialty trade (electrical, roofing and the rest — not plumbing alone), it includes part-time and side-business filers, so it understates a full-time operation, it counts sole proprietorships only — S-corps and partnerships aren't in it — and it is net income after costs, not a price list.
So price from your own stack instead of a national number: the parts and materials, your time at a rate that makes the job worth leaving the house for, truck and tool wear, any fee the job itself triggers — and the tax load in the last section below, because none of it hides inside a company's overhead anymore.
The full version of that stack is the business decision: going out on your own as a plumber — licence, startup costs, cash flow — is a different question with its own math.
Employer policies: the second gate
Even where state law lets you take the work, your employer's rules are a second gate, and they can be stricter than the licensing board's.
Look for moonlighting, outside-employment and conflict-of-interest clauses in the handbook and the offer letter.
Your first step is to read those documents — and if they are unclear, ask before the first side job, not after it.
Two clauses do the most damage on side jobs.
The first is company property: a van, tools or parts that belong to your employer are not your side-job rig.
The second is your employer's customers: soliciting the accounts you service on the clock is exactly what non-solicitation clauses exist for.
Non-competes are the third clause to check, and the federal law here moved recently: the FTC's 2024 non-compete rule never took effect — the FTC voted on September 5, 2025 to dismiss its appeals and accept a court's vacatur of the rule, and removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations effective February 12, 2026.
What a non-compete in your agreement means for side work is therefore a state-law question — read with your own agreement in hand and, where the stakes justify it, with a local employment attorney.
And a label to understand before you invoice anyone: taking side jobs "as a 1099" doesn't decide your status by itself.
Worker classification turns on economic reality, not the label or the form — and a genuine independent contractor gets no federal minimum-wage or overtime protection (U.S. Department of Labor).
Our 1099 income guide covers when that label fits and what it costs you.
Insurance and liability on a side job
On your employer's work, a claim meets the company first: its licence, its insurer, its office staff.
On a side job, there is no employer between the work and you — no company licence, insurer or office in front of the job.
The state minimums our research can cite are set for licensed plumbing contractors.
Minnesota requires plumbing contractors to carry liability insurance of at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per occurrence and $10,000 property damage, plus a $25,000 surety bond and workers' compensation.
Kentucky has no separate plumbing contractor licence — a plumbing business there operates under an active master plumber licence and must carry at least $250,000 in general liability insurance, plus workers' compensation and unemployment insurance compliance.
These are licence minimums set by those states, not a coverage recommendation for your situation.
City and county permits are the other layer to check, and our research didn't confirm a city insurance rule for plumbing permits to cite here — ask the city or county where the work happens what a permit requires before you quote the job.
What we can't tell you is what your employer's policy does off the clock.
That answer is inside the policy document, and it is a question for your agent or insurer before the first job — not after the first leak.
Taxes on side job income
Side-job money is self-employment income to the IRS, and the tax part of this page is the fixed part.
Once your net earnings from self-employment reach $400 or more for the year, self-employment tax applies.
The rate is 15.3%: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare.
You can deduct the employer-equivalent half when figuring adjusted gross income.
For 2026, the 12.4% Social Security part applies only up to $184,500; the Medicare part has no cap.
The paperwork threshold moved too: for tax years beginning after 2025, the Form 1099-NEC reporting threshold for nonemployee compensation rose from $600 to $2,000 under Pub.
L.
119-21, and it will be inflation-adjusted from 2027.
A customer under the threshold who never sends a form hasn't made the income untaxable — the threshold changes what gets reported, not what gets taxed.
Price with the tax inside the fee, not after it.
Self-employment tax funds Social Security and Medicare, so it is a separate charge from income tax — set the share aside before the earnings feel spendable, and ask a tax professional what estimated payments mean for your W-2 withholding.
Career information, not legal or tax advice. Licensing and permit rules are set by your state licensing board — or your city or county where licensing is local — and tax rules by the IRS. Confirm the rules that matter with the board and a tax professional before you take the work.