What permits do you need to open a food truck in Portland?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 14 records listed for a food truck in Portland, OR, 4 apply to every business of this type and 10 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

Of the 4 that always apply, 1 carry a flat fee, coming to $10.00. That is a floor, not a total. 5 of the 14 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 4 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Portland Business License Tax & Multnomah County Business Income Tax: City of Portland Business License Tax: 2.6% of net business income (Portland City Code Chapter 7.02, effective for tax years beginning January 1, 2018 or later). Multnomah County Business Income Tax (MCBIT): 2.0% of net income, administered jointly under the same registration and combined return by intergovernmental agreement — a combined 4.6% of net income for a business operating inside Multnomah County. Small-business exemption thresholds are set on GROSS RECEIPTS, not net income, and differ by government: the City exempts gross receipts under $75,000 for tax years beginning in 2026 (rising to under $100,000 for tax years beginning 2027 or later; it was under $50,000 for 2007-2025); the County exempts gross receipts under $100,000 (in effect since 2020, up from $50,000, and originally $25,000). A related regional tax, the 1% Metro Supportive Housing Services (SHS) Business Income Tax, is also collected by the same Revenue Division but only on businesses with more than $5,000,000 in gross receipts, and is a three-county (Metro) tax rather than a City or Multnomah County requirement — it is deliberately excluded from the combined rate above.

Mobile Food Unit (Food Truck) Licence: Multnomah County EHS 2026 base fee: Mobile units Class I, II or III are $760/year; Class IV is $920/year. Mobile plan review (required before a new unit can operate) is $790, or $2,380 rush. A commissary agreement servicing the mobile unit is billed separately at $720/year (or $630/year for a stand-alone warehouse). An out-of-county mobile unit visiting Multnomah County is $25.

Food Cart Pod Licence: Multnomah County EHS 2026 base fee for a pod of two or more carts sharing a site: $540/year for 2-9 units, $720/year for 10 or more units, plus a one-time $770 Food Cart Pod Plan Review.

Vending Cart / Food Cart Right-of-Way Permit: $150 application fee plus $150 annual permit fee, plus a $54 insurance processing fee.

Food Service Facility Licence: $602–$1,545 a year, banded by seating in statewide brackets but priced by each county

Permits for a food truck in Portland, OR come from 7 separate offices: City of Portland Revenue Division, Portland Fire & Rescue, Fire Marshal's Office, Multnomah County Health Department, Environmental Health Services, Portland Bureau of Transportation, Oregon Secretary of State, Corporation Division, Oregon Department of Revenue, Oregon Health Authority, Foodborne Illness Prevention Program. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City of Portland Revenue DivisionIssues 1 permit on this page: Portland Business License Tax & Multnomah County Business Income Tax111 SW Columbia Street, Suite 600, Portland, OR 97201 · (503) 823-5157www.portland.gov/revenue
• Portland Fire & Rescue, Fire Marshal's OfficeIssues 1 permit on this page: Propane Use Permit (Vending & Food Carts)1300 SE Gideon Street, Portland, OR 97202 · (503) 823-3700www.portland.gov/fire
• Multnomah County Health Department, Environmental Health ServicesIssues 2 permits on this page: Mobile Food Unit (Food Truck) Licence, Food Cart Pod Licence847 NE 19th Avenue, Suite 350, Portland, OR 97232 · (503) 988-3400multco.us/programs/health-inspections-and-licensing
• Portland Bureau of TransportationIssues 1 permit on this page: Vending Cart / Food Cart Right-of-Way Permit1120 SW 5th Avenue, Portland, OR 97204 · (503) 823-5185www.portland.gov/transportation
• Oregon Secretary of State, Corporation DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Incorporation, General Business Licence (local, not state), Articles of Organization (LLC), Annual Report255 Capitol Street NE, Suite 151, Salem, OR 97310 · (503) 986-2200sos.oregon.gov/business
• Oregon Department of RevenueIssues 3 permits on this page: Seller's Permit (not required by Oregon), Business Identification Number (payroll), Corporate Activity Tax Registration955 Center Street NE, Salem, OR 97301 · (503) 945-8005www.oregon.gov/dor/programs/businesses/Pages/corporate-activity-tax.aspx
• Oregon Health Authority, Foodborne Illness Prevention ProgramIssues 2 permits on this page: Food Service Facility Licence, Food Handler Card800 NE Oregon Street, Suite 640, Portland, OR 97232 · (971) 673-0440www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/HEALTHYENVIRONMENTS/FOODSAFETY

Administered jointly by the City of Portland Revenue Division on behalf of both governments — one registration and one combined tax return covers both the City tax and the County tax. Portland's own code states the 'license' is 'strictly for revenue purposes' and is not a regulatory permit: there is no per-industry fee schedule like some cities use (a salon and a warehouse pay the identical 2.6%/2.0% rates on their net income), and there is no flat minimum fee — a business below both exemption thresholds must still register but owes no tax.

Required for any vending or food cart using propane for portable heating or cooking equipment. Operating without this permit, or mishandling the propane bottle once permitted, is separately citable starting at $100/$200/$400 for a first/second/third violation. The $35 figure comes from the fee schedule Portland Fire & Rescue's own current policy page still links (effective July 1, 2019) — the most recent version this research could locate; the site gives no indication a newer schedule has superseded it, but that vintage is disclosed here rather than presented as freshly re-adopted.

This is the county food-safety licence only. Operating inside the City of Portland separately requires a PP&D zoning check (a standalone cart on private property needs no additional City land-use permit, but a cart longer than 16 feet, or a motorized food truck, faces added zoning restrictions), a City of Portland Business License Tax / MCBIT registration, a Portland Fire & Rescue propane permit if the unit cooks with propane, and — if sited on the public sidewalk rather than private property — a PBOT right-of-way vending permit. See the related Food Cart Pod, Propane Use Permit and Vending Cart Right-of-Way Permit records.

This is the county's pod-level food-safety fee, on top of each individual cart's own Mobile Food Unit licence. A pod also needs its own City land-use sign-off — PP&D's own guidance states a vending cart pod needs a Development Review (DR) permit to check zoning and utility requirements, plus a commercial building permit for any permanent structure such as a shared restroom — but the exact PP&D fee line item for that Development Review could not be isolated in the current Land Use Services Fee Schedule (which has no review type named 'Development Review') and is not asserted here as a number. A pod's required dump station and grease interceptor also carry Bureau of Environmental Services System Development Charges, separate from anything recorded in this file; secondary sources widely cite roughly $4,979 per cart, but this could not be confirmed against a primary BES fee schedule.

Only required when a cart is sited on the public sidewalk/right-of-way rather than on private property; a cart on private property instead needs PP&D zoning sign-off and, for two or more carts, the Food Cart Pod licence recorded separately. Processing takes 6-8 weeks from application to permit issuance.

The same $100 as an LLC — Oregon prices by domestic against foreign rather than by entity type, so the choice between an LLC and a corporation costs nothing either way at formation or at renewal. A foreign corporation is $275, a nonprofit $50.

No fee, because Oregon has no general sales tax and therefore no seller's permit, resale certificate or vendor licence at any level of government. This is the step that opens almost every other state's checklist, and here it simply is not there. What stands in its place is a stack of three obligations, none of which is a sales tax: registering the entity with the Secretary of State, obtaining a payroll number before paying anyone, and registering for the Corporate Activity Tax once commercial activity reaches $750,000. A retailer selling only into Oregon collects nothing from customers at the till.

There is no fee, and one number covers everything: state withholding, unemployment insurance, the statewide transit tax, Paid Leave Oregon, the workers' benefit fund assessment and the TriMet or Lane Transit district payroll taxes where they apply. You must have it before paying anyone, and a corporation with no other staff still needs one to report what it pays its own officers. Register online rather than on paper — the revenue department warns that paper takes substantially longer, which matters when the deadline is your first payroll.

The structure is statewide and the price is not. Every county uses the same four seating brackets — up to fifteen seats, sixteen to fifty, fifty-one to a hundred and fifty, and above that — but the statute obliges the health authority to delegate licensing to the local public health authority, and that authority adopts its own fees. The spread is material: for 2026 Multnomah County charges $970, $1,150, $1,290 and $1,545 across the four bands, while Clackamas charges $876, $970, $1,065 and $1,256, so the top band differs by nearly a quarter. Limited service is $890 in Multnomah and $602 in Clackamas. Multnomah also charges $1,265 for plan review of new construction, $760 to $920 for a mobile unit, $720 for a commissary and $210 for a temporary event. Two signs confirm there is no statewide number: the state's own licence directory lists no fee and tells you to contact your county, and the statewide application form leaves the amount blank for the county to fill in. Ask your county, and expect the figure to rise in January — Multnomah has already published higher 2027 bands.

No fee, because Oregon issues no general business licence, and unusually the registering agency says so outright rather than leaving it to be inferred: the state does not issue a general business licence, and your business registration serves that purpose. Cities and counties are another matter — Portland and Multnomah County, Salem, Eugene and Beaverton all impose their own, and for most Oregon businesses that local licence is the only thing resembling a general business licence they will encounter.

A hundred dollars, and a corporation costs the same. The number that catches people out is the foreign one: registering an out-of-state company to do business in Oregon costs $275, nearly three times the domestic fee, and the same premium applies every year at renewal. A nonprofit is $50. An assumed business name is $50 and renews every two years. Because Oregon has no sales tax there is no seller's permit to obtain after this — the registration is the whole of the entry step for a business with no employees and modest revenue.

Oregon charges as much to keep a company alive each year as it charged to create it, which puts it among the more expensive states to maintain an entity in. The due date is the anniversary of your own filing, not a fixed date shared by everyone, and the notice goes out about forty-five days ahead. The penalty structure is the unusual part: there is no late fee. Miss the report and the entity is administratively dissolved, and the way back is reinstatement plus every missed year's fee. That can be done online if the dissolution is less than five years old; beyond five years it needs special forms and documentation. The reinstatement fee itself is not published on the fee schedule, so budget for it as an unknown rather than a figure — and file on time, which is cheaper by definition.

There is no fee to register, and the two thresholds are constantly confused. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of Oregon commercial activity triggers a duty to register, within thirty days of hitting it. One million triggers the duty to file a return and pay. A business between the two must register and owes nothing — and failing to register anyway costs $100 a month up to $1,000 a year. Above a million the tax is $250 plus 0.57 per cent of taxable commercial activity over that first million. It is a gross receipts tax, not an income tax, which means it is owed on turnover regardless of whether the year was profitable.

Ten dollars for three years, and unlike most states this is a genuine legal duty on the worker rather than something an employer may choose to require: every food service worker must obtain one within thirty days of starting work. Two details matter for anyone hiring. A card issued by any Oregon county is valid across the whole state, so a worker moving between counties need not re-test. But a card from another state carries no reciprocity at all — an experienced food worker arriving from Washington or California must sit the Oregon test like anyone else. Testing runs through the county environmental health office or an approved provider, and a replacement card costs $5.