Get a written contract signed on every roofing job before any labor or material arrives. Every sub or rep you pay on a 1099 needs a W-9 before the first check, and a 1099-NEC by January 31 once you’ve paid them $2,000 or more in 2026. The 1099 label alone doesn’t make anyone a contractor, since the IRS and the Labor Department weigh the whole working relationship.
Put the work, the completion time, the price and the payment terms in the contract, plus anything your rep promised out loud. A federal rule adds a three-day cancellation notice to any sale of $25 or more signed at the house.
I run Zentora, a marketing company for roofers, and contract and tax law are outside our work. The rules below come from US federal agency pages and Texas statutes as of October 2026, and Texas is the only state whose law I’ve read. Wherever you roof, have a construction attorney check each Texas section against your own state’s or province’s rules and read your contract before the first homeowner signs it.
You can lien a Texas homestead only under a contract signed before work starts
A new owner on r/Roofing asked in 2024 what document would tell customers “you need to pay me by this date.” In Texas the tool behind that date is a lien, and on a homestead you only get one if you and the homeowner sign a written contract before any labor or material is furnished. If the homeowner is married, both spouses sign, and the contract is filed with the county clerk. Start the tear-off on a handshake and you can’t lien that house.
The homeowner also has to hold back 10% of the contract price during the work and for 30 days after, so plan your final payment around that reserve. If the money still doesn’t come, your lien affidavit on a residential job is due by the 15th day of the third month after the month you finished or stopped work. A roof finished in June has until September 15.
Texas gives the homeowner a checklist for your contract
Before a Texas homeowner signs a contract to build or repair their home, you owe them the state’s disclosure statement. Its “GET IT IN WRITING” paragraph tells them the agreement should include:
- a description of the work
- the required or estimated completion time
- the cost, or how it will be determined
- the payment procedure, including the statutory reservation of funds and the conditions for final payment
It warns that an oral promise left out of the agreement “may not be enforceable under Texas law,” so whatever your rep promises at the kitchen table belongs in the contract.
An owner on r/Roofing wrote in 2026 that his contracts “are pretty simple and leave room for interpretation.” They worked until a homeowner on an insurance job demanded exact line items and the supplement pricing up front. When the price depends on what the carrier approves, the disclosure’s cost line lets you write down how you’ll set it.
Before construction starts, the homeowner also gets a written list of every sub and supplier with name, address and phone, updated within 15 days of adding one, unless they waive it in writing. Your shingle supplier goes on it even when your own crew does the install.
A sale made at the house can be canceled for three business days
The FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule, which applies nationwide, covers sales of $25 or more at the buyer’s home, even when the homeowner invited you over. Texas’s home solicitation law covers sales over $25 that you personally solicit away from your place of business.
Under both, the homeowner can cancel until midnight of the third business day after signing and gets a refund within 10 business days. Both require a 10-point bold cancellation statement and a Notice of Cancellation form in duplicate. Texas also wants the contract dated, with your company’s name and address, in the language of the sales pitch, so a pitch made in Spanish needs a Spanish contract.
Because the federal rule covers sales made after the homeowner invited you, put the notice on every contract signed at the house. A homeowner can waive the three days in a bona fide personal emergency they contacted you about, with a separate, dated, signed statement in their own handwriting. The FTC put the rule on its regulatory agenda in August 2026, so check it again before you print new contracts.
Texas insurance jobs of $1,000 or more need the deductible notice in bold
Any Texas contract you reasonably expect to be paid wholly or partly from a property insurance claim, at a price of $1,000 or more, has to carry this notice in at least 12-point bold type:
Texas law requires a person insured under a property insurance policy to pay any deductible applicable to a claim made under the policy. It is a violation of Texas law for a seller of goods or services who reasonably expects to be paid wholly or partly from the proceeds of a property insurance claim to knowingly allow the insured person to fail to pay, or assist the insured person’s failure to pay, the applicable insurance deductible.
Unless the insurer consents, the same law makes it a Class B misdemeanor to promise or advertise that you’ll pay, waive, absorb or decline to collect a homeowner’s deductible, or to do it on a job. A rebate or credit that offsets the deductible counts too, and so does helping the homeowner avoid it “in any other manner.”
The deductible can also hold up the depreciation check. On a replacement cost policy, Texas lets the carrier refuse to release withheld depreciation until it has reasonable proof the deductible was paid. The law lists a canceled check, a money order receipt, a credit card statement, or a signed installment or financing plan that requires the full deductible over time, so take it in one of those forms. Chasing that check is covered in Roofing Cash Flow: Depreciation Checks, Final Payments and Liens.
Texas also bars a contractor from acting as a public adjuster on any property where it is doing or may do the work, even with a public adjuster license or the homeowner’s power of attorney. Have an attorney read any clause that names you the homeowner’s representative with the carrier.
No single factor makes a crew 1099 or W-2
Since May 2025 the Labor Department’s investigators have stopped applying its 2024 independent contractor rule and enforce under its 2008 Fact Sheet #13 instead. A worker who sues you can still argue under the 2024 rule, which “remains in effect for purposes of private litigation.”
The fact sheet weighs seven factors. Among them are how integral the work is to your business, how permanent the relationship is, how much you control the work, and how much the worker invests and stands to gain or lose. It names construction as one of the most common problem areas and calls a state or local license immaterial.
The IRS sorts the evidence into behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship, and says no “magic” or set number of factors decides. A shirt or a gas card doesn’t make a rep W-2 on its own, whatever a 2025 comment on r/RoofingSales claimed, and a crew’s own EIN doesn’t make it 1099 on its own. Keep a record of each factor you relied on, as the IRS advises. Either you or the worker can ask the IRS to rule on Form SS-8, which “may take at least six months.”
A sales rep on r/RoofingSales wrote in 2025 that companies “call you a 1099 to avoid having to pay workers Comp.” A rep who believes that is the one who can file an SS-8 or sue.
Texas puts the burden on you for unemployment tax: paid work “is employment” unless the Texas Workforce Commission is satisfied the worker is free from control or direction “under the contract and in fact.” A signed 1099 contract covers only the first half of that.
Skipping 1099s costs you the IRS’s relief for misclassified workers
If the IRS decides a worker you paid on a 1099 was an employee, and you had no reasonable basis for the 1099, you may be liable for that worker’s employment taxes. The IRS offers two kinds of relief, and both need your 1099s. Section 530 relief requires that you filed every required 1099 consistently with how you treated the worker, and never treated a worker in a substantially similar job as an employee. The Voluntary Classification Settlement Program, which gives partial relief for moving workers to W-2, requires their 1099s for the past three years and no open employment tax or classification audit.
- Get a W-9 before the first check. Without a correct taxpayer ID, you must withhold 24% from that payee’s later payments.
- File a 1099-NEC by January 31 for each sub or rep you paid $2,000 or more in 2026. Payments to corporations are generally exempt.
- E-file once you have 10 or more information returns, which the IRS’s IRIS system does at no cost.
- File on time. For returns due in 2026, a late 1099 cost $60 to $340 a return depending on how late, charged on the IRS copy and again on the worker’s. Intentional disregard costs $680 a return with no maximum.
Without a signed agreement, a sub’s crew can count as yours for Texas comp
Workers’ comp is elective for private employers in Texas. A sub and its crew count as separate from you for comp only when the sub works as an independent contractor and has signed a written agreement taking on an employer’s responsibilities. If you carry comp and hire a sub with no employees, Texas treats you as that sub’s employer for comp. If you agree in writing to cover a sub under your policy, file that agreement with your carrier within 10 days or you’ve committed an administrative violation.
A contractor on r/GeneralContractor wrote in 2025 that a 1099 sub needs its own liability and comp. An Ohio contractor warned in a Facebook group that a sub with no tight written agreement will poach your customers. How carriers audit an uninsured sub is in Roofing Workers’ Comp and General Liability: What It Costs and How Audits Work.
If you want a sub or rep to sign a non-compete, Texas law makes one enforceable if it is ancillary to or part of an otherwise enforceable agreement. Its limits on time, area and scope of work have to be reasonable and no broader than needed to protect your business. The FTC removed its vacated federal non-compete rule in February 2026, so state law decides.
Put these in writing before your next signed job
- A contract signed before any labor or material arrives, with every promise your rep made in it.
- The cancellation statement and two Notice of Cancellation forms with any contract signed at the house.
- In Texas, the disclosure statement, the sub and supplier list, the deductible notice on insurance jobs, and on a homestead both spouses’ signatures and a county clerk filing.
- The deductible taken by check, money order, card or a signed payment plan.
- A W-9 from every sub and rep before the first check, and a signed agreement from each sub.
Then take these questions to a construction attorney:
- Which of the Texas rules in this guide, such as the deductible notice or the sub and supplier list, does my state have?
- Does my state’s home solicitation law cover an inspection the homeowner booked online?
- The federal rule exempts some repairs to “personal property” the buyer asks for. Can that cover a roof?
- Should my 1099 reps or subs sign a non-compete?
- What does my state require before I can lien a homestead?
If you’d like to see where your company shows up when a homeowner searches, try Zentora’s free Google Maps heatmap. Pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes it shows your rank at 49 points around your office.