Montana Department of Labor and Industry, Business Standards Division, Construction Contractor License Program

Construction Contractor License

The Department's CCL Program FAQ describes the license's purpose as protecting public health, safety and welfare through the regulation of construction contractors — enforcing standards of conduct, workers' compensation and unemployment coverage, and business-entity compliance — and the FAQ describes no trade examination. It also quotes MCA 37-45-202: a person who engages a contractor licensed on the date of the contract is not liable as an employer for workers' compensation coverage, unemployment insurance coverage, or wages and fringe benefits of that contractor, its employees or its subcontractors. House Bill 239, enacted as Chapter 644, Laws of 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, converted this from a plain registration into a genuine license — the old registration statute (39-9-101 and the rest of Title 39, chapter 9) is now repealed and renumbered, replaced by Title 37, chapter 45, administered by DLI's Business Standards Division as the 'Construction Contractor License (CCL) Program' rather than the old Registration Section. Existing registrants as of December 31, 2025 were automatically converted to the new license. Confirmed directly from the Department's own current CCL Program FAQ (revised May 19, 2026): the fee is unchanged at $70, for both the application and each renewal, per Administrative Rule 24.227.401 — the same figure the old registration charged. The license requirement now also expressly reaches corporations and manager-managed LLCs 'regardless of employee count,' not only contractors who have employees. A genuinely separate credential often confused with it is the Independent Contractor Exemption Certificate, $125 for a two-year term, which exists to prove someone works as a true independent contractor rather than an employee for workers' compensation purposes — a contracting business commonly needs both, for different legal reasons.