What permits do you need to open a auto repair shop in Mobile County Al?

Junkyard / Auto-Salvage License (auto-repair)

An auto-repair business that also functions as an 'automobile graveyard' — buying, selling or storing wrecked, scrapped or dismantled vehicles or parts — within 1,000 feet of a county road in unincorporated Mobile County needs a Junkyard license from the county's Environmental Services Department, priced at $750.00 a year, expiring September 30 the same as the general Business Privilege License, which this license stacks on top of. An ordinary repair shop that merely stores customer vehicles awaiting repair, insurance resolution, or law-enforcement impoundment is explicitly EXEMPT from this $750.00 license under Section 4 of the separate Mobile County Junk Control Ordinance, which instead only requires the shop to keep accurate records of each such vehicle's receipt date, ownership, status and disposition, available for county inspection on request — a real carve-out, not a reason for an ordinary repair shop to assume it needs the junkyard license. Application requires a site sketch and screening plan, proof of an active NPDES stormwater permit from the Alabama Dept. of Environmental Management, and compliance with siting setbacks (400 ft from a school, hospital or church; 100 ft from any stream or river bank); licenses are issued only by Mobile County Commission vote after Environmental Services Director approval. This license applies only in unincorporated Mobile County.

Garage and Repair Shop Privilege License

Alabama has no licensing board for auto repair — the revenue department's own list of every state board requiring a license contains no auto repair, auto body, mechanic or garage entry, and title 34 has no chapter for the trade. But a license is still required, and it is easy to miss because it is a tax license rather than an occupational one. Garages and shops where vehicles are repaired, painted, trimmed or welded for the public pay by headcount, counted at the maximum number of men employed at any point in the license year, with owners who work in the shop counted as men. It is needed for each location, including a service station or someone working from home, and the revenue department reads it to cover window tinting, fitting parts and tyres, motorcycle repair, alarm fitting and disabled vehicle lifts, but not oil changes, wheel alignment or farm machinery repair. A mechanic working exclusively from a truck at the customer's premises is outside it. Note also what is not needed: a dealer license, since every dealer class turns on selling or preparing for resale, so a shop that repairs customers' vehicles and returns them to their owners falls outside all of them.

Shared with other businesses in Mobile County Al

• Store License — Alabama Department of Revenue, Business and License Tax Division, $2 for a single store including the issuance fee, then $16 each for stores two to five, $23.50 for six to ten, $38.50 for eleven to twenty and $113.50 each beyond that, annual — 1 October to 30 September. Also required for retail stores; what it involves is set out on the retail stores page.