What do these permits involve in Los Angeles?

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Sign Permit

Signs are priced entirely differently from buildings: a flat 3.5 per cent of construction value rather than the banded Table 1-A, and plan check at 50 per cent rather than the 90 per cent that applies to buildings. Getting that second number wrong nearly doubles the estimate. Pre-inspection, where required, is $121 and can be waived. Approval to build a sign is not approval to put it anywhere — placement is governed separately by the sign article and by any sign district, specific plan or supplemental use district over the site, any of which can forbid a sign the building code would allow. Check the zoning before paying for fabrication.

Certificate of Occupancy

The certificate is free, and the code says so in those words — the cost is whatever building permit and plan check the change of use requires. Do not confuse it with the $150 Certificate of Occupancy for Use of Land, which is a different instrument for land with no building work, and which is itself waived whenever a building permit is pulled. What triggers a new certificate is a change of occupancy group or division, and the code is explicit that this applies whether or not any alteration is required — so retail to childcare, retail to auto repair, or retail to a clinic all trigger one, while a new tenant in the same use does not. A temporary certificate costs $453 plus $98 per floor for a business, mercantile, factory or storage occupancy, and lasts no more than six months. Zoning comes before all of this and is not uniform: a salon is by right in C1 and up, childcare is by right in the commercial zones but needs a conditional use permit in residential, agricultural and manufacturing zones, auto repair is by right in C2 and less restrictive zones only if it meets a long list of operating conditions — spray painting is expressly not one of them — and an animal hospital is not a listed permitted use in any commercial zone at all, being first permitted in MR1.

Business Tax Registration Certificate

There is no fee to register. Nothing in the Office of Finance's guidance or in LAMC article 1 imposes one — what you owe is the tax itself, and a business whose total gross receipts inside and outside the City stay under $100,000 owes none of it. Two traps sit behind that exemption. It is not automatic: file or renew after the delinquency date and the code makes the exemption inapplicable, so the full tax plus interest and penalty becomes payable, and a business that never registered cannot claim it at all. And the first year is not free — it is billed a year late, in the second year's renewal, which catches operators who assumed year one was exempt. Restaurants fall under Retail Sales at $1.27 per $1,000, not under services. A separate certificate is needed for each location and each classification, and liability for an unregistered business reaches back eight years.

Building Permit and Plan Check

Two things about this table are routinely got wrong. The second band is charged per $100, not per $1,000 — a factor of ten. And the multiplier applies to the whole valuation, not only to the amount above the band floor; each band's formula lands exactly on the next band's boundary, which only works that way. On top of the permit fee come plan check at 90 per cent, a $27 issuing fee, a plan maintenance fee of 2 per cent capped at $300, a fire hydrant fee of 0.22 per cent once valuation reaches $50,000, and add-ons of 10 per cent for energy compliance and 12.5 per cent for disabled access work. The minimum inspection fee is $90, and $180 where a project needs more than one inspection. Valuation itself is set from the department's own square-foot table rather than from what you paid the contractor, and no part of the work may be excluded because another agency also permits it. Note too that every fee in the Building Code is adjusted for inflation each 1 July, so the counter figure can exceed the printed one.

Permit	Issuing agency	Fee	Renews	Last checked
Sign Permitonly if it applies to you	Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety	3.5 per cent of the total value of the sign construction, never less than the $90 minimum inspection fee, plus plan check at 50 per cent of that permit fee	one-time — the sign must be installed within six months	2026-09-03
Certificate of Occupancyonly if it applies to you	Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety	No fee — the certificate itself is issued without charge	permanent — it supersedes every certificate previously issued for that space	2026-09-03
Business Tax Registration Certificate	City of Los Angeles Office of Finance	No registration fee; the tax is charged on gross receipts by classification — $1.27 per $1,000 for retail and restaurants, $3.56 for miscellaneous services, $4.25 for professions, and $153 on the first $60,000 plus $1.01 per $1,000 thereafter for contractors	annual — due 1 January, delinquent from 1 March	2026-09-03
Building Permit and Plan Checkonly if it applies to you	Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety	Charged on the total valuation of the work: $65 to $2,000, then $40 plus $1.25 per $100 to $20,000, $170 plus $6 per $1,000 to $50,000, $195 plus $5.50 per $1,000 to $100,000, $395 plus $3.50 per $1,000 to $500,000, $520 plus $3.25 per $1,000 to $1,000,000, and $920 plus $2.85 per $1,000 above that — plus plan check at 90 per cent of the permit fee	one-time, per project	2026-09-03

Business licenses and permits in Los Angeles, California

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Permits that apply to every type of business in Los Angeles