As business owners, we need to look at business licenses in North Carolina. Fortunately, North Carolina makes the process super easy! After you’ve setup an LLC or corporation, the next step is licenses.
There are over 700 different business licenses in North Carolina. Therefore, no attorney should ever know all of them. Personally, I know maybe 10 total because we have a free program that helps you identify which licenses you need.
Different Types of Business Licenses
The number is always changing, but broadly speaking, there are hundreds of occupational, business, or other licenses in our state. Most of these licenses are occupation and business. However, you also need to deal with local and privilege licenses as well.
I mostly deal with occupational licenses because they’re fairly easy to spot. Here’s a complete list of NC’s occupational and business licenses. As you can see, it is very long. Most of these are things you would never think of. For example, there’s a Striped Bass Dealer license. In my entire career, I’ll probably never see that come up.
Occupational License
An occupational license is a license issued by a licensing authority required in order to operate as a particular profession or vocation. For example, a real estate agent must be licensed in order to help people buy or sell real estate.
Privilege License
North Carolina has a state-wide privilege license for certain professions. The state privilege license generally applies only to professions registered with separate licensing board. Here is the full list of those professions requiring this state privilege license.
There are also local privilege licenses. For example, Durham County has a privilege license for selling beer, wine, or other alcohol on top of the state license. Raleigh has a separate privilege license for pawn shops.
ABC License
Finally, you have to have a special license in order to serve beer, wine, or other alcohol. Not only do you need the state permit in order to sell alcohol, some localities also require a local license.
The Easy Way To Get Business Licenses
Maybe I should have said this earlier in the article, but NC has the easiest program out there. You don’t need to hire a team of lawyers to find out what license you need. All you have to do is contact the EDPNC. You can contact them by phone at (800) 228-8443. It’s free. You can also reach them online using this link.
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