What permits do you need to open a contractor or trade in Bellevue?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 12 records listed for a contractor or trade in Bellevue, NE, 3 apply to every business of this type and 9 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

4 of the 12 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 3 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Commercial Building Permit & Certificate of Occupancy: Table 3-A of the 1997 Uniform Administrative Code (as amended, per the Master Fee Schedule), banded by project valuation: $1-$500 = $23.50 flat; $501-$2,000 = $23.50 plus $3.05 per $100 (or fraction) over $500; $2,001-$25,000 = $69.25 plus $14.00 per $1,000 (or fraction) over $2,000; $25,001-$50,000 = $391.75 plus $10.10 per $1,000 over $25,000; $50,001-$100,000 = $643.75 plus $7.00 per $1,000 over $50,000; $100,001-$500,000 = $993.75 plus $5.60 per $1,000 over $100,000; $500,001-$1,000,000 = $3,233.75 plus $4.75 per $1,000 over $500,000; over $1,000,000 = $5,608.75 plus $3.65 per $1,000 over $1,000,000. A commercial plan-review fee of 25% of the building permit fee applies on top of this for new construction. New commercial/civic/office construction separately triggers a $5,000.00-per-development-acre Arterial Street Improvement Program (ASIP) fee, and — only within the Papio Creek and South Sarpy Watershed boundaries — a $5,642.00-per-acre Papio Creek/South Sarpy Watershed Partnership fee (FY2024-2026 rate).

Contractor & Trade Licensing (Building, Plumbing, Mechanical, Sewer): Contractor licence, annual: Class A General Contractor Unlimited $250.00; Class B General Contractor Limited $200.00; Class C Residential Contractor Unlimited $100.00; Class D Residential Contractor Limited $75.00; Class E Roofing Contractor Unlimited $50.00 (each issued through an ICC competency exam). A one-job 'Special Contractor License' costs $1,000.00 (Class A/B), $500.00 (Class C), $200.00 (Class D) or $100.00 (Class E). Plumbing/Mechanical/Sewer Layer, annual: Master $75.00 initial/$75.00 renewal; Journeyman Plumber/Mechanical Journeyman/Sheet Metal Journeyman/Mechanical Apprentice $25.00 initial/$25.00 renewal; Lawn Sprinkler Contractor/Installer $25.00 initial/$25.00 renewal; Apprentice Plumber $25.00 initial/$25.00 renewal; a one-job Special Master Mechanical/Plumber permit is $150.00. Late renewal after expiration is $20.00-$100.00 per month (up to 3 months) depending on licence type, and reinstatement is the yearly fee plus late fees doubled.

Notice of Formation Publication: Set by the newspaper itself, not the state, so no official figure exists — commonly reported in the region of $80 to $250 but unverified against any state schedule

Biennial Report: For an LLC, $25 filed electronically or $30 in writing; for a corporation, an occupation tax starting at $26 domestic or $52 foreign, rising in tiers by paid-in capital

Permits for a contractor or trade in Bellevue, NE come from 6 separate offices: City of Bellevue, Nebraska, Office of the City Clerk, City of Bellevue, Nebraska, Permits & Inspections (Building Department), City of Bellevue, Nebraska, Planning Department, Nebraska Secretary of State, Business Services Division, Nebraska Department of Labor, Contractor Registration, Nebraska State Electrical Division. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City of Bellevue, Nebraska, Office of the City ClerkIssues 1 permit on this page: General Business License (not required by the City of Bellevue)1500 Wall Street, Bellevue, NE 68005 · (402) 293-3007www.bellevue.net/278/City-Clerk
• City of Bellevue, Nebraska, Permits & Inspections (Building Department)Issues 2 permits on this page: Commercial Building Permit & Certificate of Occupancy, Contractor & Trade Licensing (Building, Plumbing, Mechanical, Sewer)1510 Wall Street, Bellevue, NE 68005 · (402) 293-3014www.bellevue.net/331/Permits-Inspections
• City of Bellevue, Nebraska, Planning DepartmentIssues 1 permit on this page: Zoning Verification Letter1500 Wall Street, Bellevue, NE 68005 · (402) 293-3000www.bellevue.net/334/Planning
• Nebraska Secretary of State, Business Services DivisionIssues 5 permits on this page, including General Business Licence (not required by Nebraska), Certificate of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation1201 N Street, Suite 120, Lincoln, NE 68508 · (402) 471-4079sos.nebraska.gov/business-services
• Nebraska Department of Labor, Contractor RegistrationIssues 2 permits on this page: Construction Contractor Registration, Plumbing and HVAC Licence (local, not state)dol.nebraska.gov/conreg
• Nebraska State Electrical DivisionIssues 1 permit on this page: Electrical Contractor or Journeyman Licence1220 Lincoln Mall, Suite 125, Lincoln, NE 68508 · (402) 471-3550electrical.nebraska.gov

No fee applies. The City's own Master Fee Schedule lists only a short set of narrow occupation taxes — liquor licence classes, natural gas distributors (3% of gross), telephone companies (6.25% of gross), hotel operators (5.5% of gross), and music/vending/amusement machines — with no restaurant, drinking-place or general food-sales tax of the kind Lincoln (2%) and Omaha (2.5%) both charge. Chapter 8.5's own $25.00 annual 'license and occupation tax' applies only to businesses located within a designated Business Improvement District's boundaries, not citywide, and funds local BID public-improvement projects rather than general city operations. A handful of narrow Temporary Business Licences exist instead (Seasonal Merchant $25/one month or $50/four months; Itinerant Merchant/Peddler/Solicitor/Street Vendor/Transient Merchant/Mobile Vendor $50/day or $300/year; Carnival/Circus/Public Amusement Show $50/event plus $10/day per attraction) — none of them a universal operating licence. A business still needs Nebraska Secretary of State entity registration and any applicable state licence (both recorded at the state layer), plus whichever local building, zoning, fire and food-safety approvals apply below.

A genuine, confirmed valuation-based fee table, retrieved from the City's own separately-hosted 'Building Permit Fees' PDF after the Master Fee Schedule itself only referenced the table by name ('1997 Uniform Administrative Code fees as amended') without reprinting it. No standalone certificate-of-occupancy fee appears anywhere in the Master Fee Schedule; this project treats the certificate of occupancy as bundled into this same building-permit process under the locally-adopted 2021 International Building Code, rather than a separately-priced product. A business owner planning new construction (not a remodel) should budget for the ASIP and, if applicable, watershed-partnership fees on top of the base Table 3-A permit fee — both are real, confirmed, per-acre charges tied to the building-permit process rather than the permit fee itself.

A genuine, confirmed flat fee directly from the City's own Master Fee Schedule. The same schedule prices a Comprehensive Plan Amendment or Zoning Text Amendment at $500.00, a Change of Zone at $200.00-$550.00 by acreage, and a Conditional Use Permit at $175.00 (1 acre or less) or $325.00 (more than 1 acre) — relevant if a business's use requires more than a routine zoning check. No separate, discounted childcare-specific zoning letter was found the way Lincoln prices one; a Bellevue childcare provider pays this same general rate.

A genuine local contractor and trade-licensing system, confirmed in full from the City's own Master Fee Schedule and its own Building Department 'Application for Competency' forms. One honest gap: the Building Department separately publishes a 'License Application (Electrical)' form requiring the applicant's Nebraska State Electrical Division licence number — proving Bellevue does register electrical contractors locally, layered on the state credential, the same pattern Lincoln and Omaha both follow — but no electrical-specific dollar figure appears anywhere in the Master Fee Schedule's own City License section, which prices only Contractor, Plumbing, Mechanical and Sewer Layer categories. That gap is recorded honestly here rather than assumed to match Lincoln's ($125-$250/year) or Omaha's ($85/year) own electrical registration fees. Plumbing and mechanical/HVAC trades have no Nebraska state equivalent at all, exactly the pattern the state layer already flags ('licensed by the city or village nearest the job').

No fee, because Nebraska's own business registration portal lists only industry-specific licences and tax registrations, never a universal operating licence. What a business actually needs is entity registration with the Secretary of State, tax registration with the revenue department if it sells taxable goods, and whichever industry-specific licence applies below.

A hundred dollars online, $110 in person or by mail — filing online genuinely saves ten dollars. A corporation costs the same either way. Neither figure is the whole story, though: Nebraska formation is not complete until the newspaper publication requirement below is satisfied.

The same $100 online, $110 in person or by mail as an LLC, before newspaper publication. A nonprofit corporation is cheaper at $25 online or $30 in person.

Nebraska is one of a small number of states that still requires a company to announce its own existence in print — notice of organisation must run in a legal newspaper of general circulation near the entity's designated office for three consecutive weeks, and proof of that publication has to be filed back with the Secretary of State before formation is truly complete. The state sets no price for this at all; the newspaper does, and rates vary by publication and county. Skipping this step after paying the formation fee leaves the filing incomplete.

The two entity types sit on opposite calendars entirely, not just different fees. An LLC's report is due only in odd-numbered years, an ordinary corporation's only in even-numbered ones, each with its own due date and its own separate delinquency date weeks later. A corporation's charge is not a flat report fee but a genuine occupation tax, starting at $26 for a domestic corporation with modest paid-in capital and $52 for a foreign one, climbing through statutory tiers as capital grows — a large corporation can owe tens of thousands of dollars on this filing. Missing either deadline leads straight to administrative dissolution or, for a foreign entity, revocation of its authority to do business, effective the day after the delinquency date.

This is registration, not a competency licence — no examination sits behind it, and Nebraska licenses no general contractor by trade skill at all. The fee itself recently changed, rising to $40 a year effective 1 August 2026 under the statutory cap the labour department is permitted to charge; anything quoting a lower figure predates that change. A contractor performing plumbing or HVAC work statewide still needs this registration even though those two trades have no state licence of their own — see the note on electrical below for the one trade that does.

Electrical is the one trade Nebraska genuinely licenses at state level, through its own State Electrical Division, and it prices contractor and master-level credentials far above journeyman-tier ones: $187.50 a year for an electrical contractor or a master electrician, against $37.50 a year for a journeyman, a residential wireman, a fire alarm installer, an irrigation installer, a sign installer or an HVAC-and-refrigeration credential. An apprentice registers for a flat $35. Every licence on the current cycle shares one expiry date, 31 December 2026, rather than an individual anniversary. Plumbing has no equivalent at state level at all — see the plumbing and HVAC record.

No fee, because plumbing work in Nebraska is licensed by the city or village nearest the job rather than by any state board — the statute expressly requires a master plumber licensed locally, and only fills the gap with the Uniform Plumbing Code where a municipality has adopted no ordinance of its own. HVAC and mechanical work follow the same pattern: no state licence exists, only whatever a given municipality chooses to require. A contractor working across several Nebraska towns on plumbing or HVAC work may need a separate local credential in each one, on top of the statewide contractor registration required for construction work generally.