IHSS Paid Sick Leave: Hours, Filing, and Deadline

IHSS paid sick leave gives eligible In-Home Supportive Services providers in California 40 hours of paid time off each state fiscal year, once they have worked enough qualifying hours to both accrue and use it. The rules diverge from standard California paid sick leave in a few places that matter, and getting them wrong can cost you hours, delay a claim, or leave you with an unexpected tax bill.

When You Become Eligible

Eligibility runs in two steps, and both have to happen before you can take a paid sick day.

First, you accrue your annual bank of sick leave after working 100 hours of authorized services for one or more IHSS recipients following your initial hire date. Your initial hire date is either the date you first began providing services or the date of your official enrollment.¹

Second, accruing the hours does not let you use them yet. You must either work an additional 200 hours for any IHSS recipient or wait 60 calendar days from the accrual date, whichever comes first.¹

If you work for more than one recipient, all your hours count toward both thresholds. You do not have to hit 100 or 200 with a single recipient.

How Many Hours You Get Each Year

Eligible providers get 40 hours of paid sick leave at the start of each state fiscal year, which runs July 1 through June 30. For fiscal year 2025–2026, those 40 hours became available on July 1, 2025.¹ The 40-hour amount reflects the increase California put in place beginning January 1, 2024.²

Any hours you have not used by June 30 expire. They do not roll into the next fiscal year.¹ The 40 hours is your total bank across all recipients you serve, not 40 per recipient.

Sick leave is paid at the hourly rate you earn for your regular authorized services, and IHSS rates vary by county.

What You Can Use It For

IHSS paid sick leave covers the same reasons as California’s general paid sick leave law: diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition, or preventive care such as annual checkups and dental visits. It applies to your own health and to caring for a family member.³

California defines family member broadly. It includes your child, parent, spouse, registered domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or a designated person you identify. Sick leave also applies if you or a family member is a victim of a qualifying act of violence, which covers domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and conduct involving threats of injury, death, or dangerous weapons.³

You do not have to disclose the specific reason on your claim form. The form only needs your signature as the provider.¹ No doctor’s note is required.

Telling Your Recipient

You still owe your recipient reasonable advance notice so they can arrange care while you are out. The recommended timing is 48 hours for planned sick leave and at least two hours before your workday starts for unplanned sick leave. The point is to give the recipient time to line up alternative help for services they depend on.

How to File a Claim

You can file online or on paper.

Online Through the ESP

The IHSS Electronic Services Portal lets you submit sick leave claims alongside your regular payroll tasks. After logging in, go to the sick leave section and enter the dates and hours. The portal also shows your remaining balance and the status of past claims.⁴

Paper Form SOC 2302

The paper option is Form SOC 2302, the IHSS Provider Paid Sick Leave Request Form. It captures your name and provider number, the recipient’s name and case number, and the dates and hours of sick leave taken.¹ Get the form from the CDSS website or your local county office. Mail only the SOC 2302 to the address printed on the form, in a separate envelope from your timesheet. Keep a copy.

For questions about your balance or eligibility, the IHSS Service Help Desk is at (866) 376-7066.

The Deadline That Kills Claims

Your SOC 2302 must be received for processing by the end of the month following the month in which you took the sick leave. Sick leave used in March needs a form arriving by the end of April. Miss the window and the claim cannot be processed.¹

Other things that commonly delay or sink claims:

Claiming more hours than your remaining balance. Check the balance first.
A wrong provider or case number. A single transposed digit slows processing.
Sending the SOC 2302 in the same envelope as your timesheet. It goes in its own envelope to the address on the form.

Payment for approved claims arrives the same way your regular timesheet pay does, whether that is direct deposit or a paper check.

How Sick Leave Pay Is Taxed

This is where live-in providers get caught. If you live with the recipient you care for, you may already exclude your regular IHSS wages from federal gross income under IRS Notice 2014-7, which treats qualifying Medicaid waiver payments as nontaxable difficulty of care payments.⁵

Sick leave pay does not qualify. The IRS has stated that the only amounts excludable under Notice 2014-7 are payments for actual care of the disabled individual, and that paid time off, including sick leave and vacation pay, is not a payment for providing care and therefore is not a difficulty of care payment.⁵

If you normally exclude your IHSS income from your return, any sick leave payments you receive during the year are the exception and need to be reported as taxable income. Using all 40 hours will not create a huge tax bill, but leaving it off the return can produce IRS notices later. Set aside a portion for taxes or ask a preparer familiar with IHSS income.

Sick Leave and Overtime

Sick leave hours are not “hours worked” under the Fair Labor Standards Act, so they do not count toward the 40-hour weekly threshold for overtime.⁶ If you worked 35 hours and took 8 hours of sick leave in the same week, your hours worked for overtime purposes is 35.

Keep Your Own Records

Federal rules require records related to domestic service employment to be kept for at least three years.⁷ Practically, hold onto copies of every SOC 2302 you submit, ESP confirmation screenshots, timesheets, and pay stubs showing sick leave payments. Store them together. Three years is the floor; longer costs nothing and protects you if questions come up about a past fiscal year.

1
California Department of Social Services. IHSS Paid Sick Leave Program Information
2
LegiScan. CA SB616 Bill Text
3
California Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions
4
California Department of Social Services. Electronic Services
5
Internal Revenue Service. Certain Medicaid Waiver Payments May Be Excludable From Income
6
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Hours Worked Advisor – Holidays, Vacations and Sick Time
7
eCFR. 29 CFR 552.110 – Recordkeeping Requirements