Licenses and permits in Utah

Forming the company is not permission to do the work. The Division of Corporations filing is not a business license. Cities and counties license the businesses inside their borders, the state licenses professions and construction trades, and home food is a registration with the Department of Agriculture and Food.

What’s different in Utah

• The general business license is local. The Division of Corporations’ licensing guide tells businesses to get a business license from the city or county where the business is located⁷. Ask the city, and the county if you are outside a city.
• A construction job under $7,000 is the small-job exemption, and it is not a blank check. Several trades stay licensed. Over $3,000¹, you still file an insurance affirmation.
• Home food can be sold to a store, inside Utah. The fee table lists the registration at $75⁴.
• A profession has its own board. Contractor licensing is at the Division of Professional Licensing.

Do this

1. Ask the city and the county where you will operate. A city licenses businesses inside its limits. A county covers the unincorporated areas of the county⁷. Requirements and fees differ by place. The Division of Corporations filing is not that license. The division’s licensing guide lists licensing offices for larger cities. It does not list their fees.* Call the clerk for the city and the county you will work in.
2. If the work is a licensed profession, use that board. The Division of Professional Licensing is the state’s index for occupational licenses, including contractors. This guide does not list board fees.* Open the board for your profession before you take a client.
3. If the work is contracting, read the exemption before you assume you need the license. One exemption is a job under $7,000, including later changes to the job. Plumbing or electrical work on that small job still has to be done by a licensed plumbing or electrical contractor, if the job involves those systems. Gas appliances, water-based fire protection, alarm work, HVAC, and radon mitigation have their own sentences in the same section. An owner or lessee maintaining the owner's or lessee's own property is outside the chapter for that work, and so is a person regularly employed by that owner or lessee for the maintenance. If that exempt job is over $3,000¹, you also file a one-time affirmation of public liability insurance, and of workers’ compensation if you have an employee on the job. The insurance amounts are set by division rule, not printed in the statute.* Read section 58-55-305 for the job you will actually do. The section is effective until it is renumbered on January 1, 2027. Apply through the contractor page when the license applies.
4. Selling food from home? You need a valid food handler permit, plus department approval through inspection and registration. Products may be sold only within Utah, either direct to the consumer or to stores for resale. The label has to include the food name, the ingredients, the net quantity, the allergens, the business name and contact information, and the words Home Produced. The department emails an invoice for the registration fee after you apply, and the fee is nonrefundable³. The fee table lists cottage registration at $75⁴ for the home-produced category. Honey also has a hive registration with the Plant Industry Division. The cottage page rules out refrigerated or frozen food, meat and poultry, and canned or other high-risk foods. A business outside these rules needs a different food-establishment registration on the same table. This is not a sales tax license. That account is on Get your tax IDs. Sales tax does not apply to sales of food and food ingredients or prepared food by a home cook⁵. A home cook is an individual who prepares the food exclusively in a private, noncommercial home kitchen⁶. The statute does not say whether a kitchen the department has inspected and registered for cottage food counts as noncommercial.* Check with the Tax Commission or a legal professional before you sell without collecting tax.
5. Keep each expiration on its own line. A city license, a contractor license, and a cottage-food registration do not share a date with the Division of Corporations annual report. That report follows the anniversary month. The details are on Stay compliant.

What you get back

A local license if the city or county requires one, a contractor license if the statute covers the job, and a cottage-food registration if you sell from home inside the rules. Each one stands on its own. None of them is the LLC filing.