What permits do you need to open a childcare centre in Tacoma?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 8 records listed for a childcare centre in Tacoma, WA, 5 apply to every business of this type and 3 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 5 that always apply, 1 carry a flat fee, coming to $50.00. That is a floor, not a total. 4 of the 8 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 0 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Certificate of Occupancy: $450 for a new Certificate of Occupancy not associated with a current building permit. A Temporary Certificate of Occupancy is $450; extending one is $230; re-issuing an expired one is $450.

City Business Licence: Tiered by companywide gross income: $37 under $12,000; $190 for $12,000–$250,000; $435 for $250,001–$1,000,000; $1,500 for $1,000,000–$5,000,000; $2,000 above $5,000,000.

Commercial Building Permit: Valuation-based (Table 8-1): $55 for $1–$500; $170 + $32 per $1,000 over $2,000, to $25,000; $2,240 + $13 per $1,000 over $100,000, to $500,000; $7,420 + $11 per $1,000 over $500,000, to $1,000,000; $12,600 + $8.50 per $1,000 above $1,000,000. Plan review is 65% of the permit fee ($56 minimum). A tenant improvement inside a shell building is billed at 50% of the ICC Building Valuation per square foot. A commercial demolition permit is a flat $310.

Child Care Centre Licence: $125 a year for the first twelve children plus $12 for each additional child; a family home pays a flat $30

Permits for a childcare centre in Tacoma, WA come from 5 separate offices: City of Tacoma Planning and Development Services, City of Tacoma Finance Department, Tax & License Division, Washington State Department of Revenue, Business Licensing Service, Washington Secretary of State, Corporations and Charities Division, Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City of Tacoma Planning and Development ServicesIssues 2 permits on this page: Certificate of Occupancy, Commercial Building Permit(253) 591-5030www.tacomapermits.org
• City of Tacoma Finance Department, Tax & License DivisionIssues 1 permit on this page: City Business Licence747 Market Street, Room 212, Tacoma, WA 98402 · (253) 591-5252tacoma.gov/government/departments/finance/taxes-and-licenses
• Washington State Department of Revenue, Business Licensing ServiceIssues 1 permit on this page: Washington State Business LicencePO Box 9034, Olympia, WA 98507-9034 · (360) 705-6705dor.wa.gov/open-business/apply-business-license
• Washington Secretary of State, Corporations and Charities DivisionIssues 3 permits on this page: Certificate of Formation (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Annual ReportPO Box 40234, Olympia, WA 98504-0234 · (360) 725-0377www.sos.wa.gov/corporations-charities/business-entities
• Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and FamiliesIssues 1 permit on this page: Child Care Centre Licence1500 Jefferson Street SE, Olympia, WA 98501 · (800) 723-4831dcyf.wa.gov/services/early-learning-providers/licensed-provider

The fee schedule has no separate line item for a Certificate of Occupancy tied to a current building permit, suggesting — though this was not explicitly confirmed — that it may be bundled into the permit fee in that case.

A separate, older undated PDF shows lower, likely-superseded figures ($25/$110/$250); the current dated tacoma.gov page is used here instead. Separate from the Washington state Business License Service fee already covered at the state layer.

Valuation for new construction comes from ICC's Building Valuation Data; for remodels/tenant improvements it is total actual construction cost, including finish, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and fire-system work.

This is a real statewide business licence, which almost no other state has, and the $50 is only the handling fee — each endorsement carries its own charge on top, though state tax registration itself is free and a trade name is $5. Adding a location or a partner city's non-resident endorsement costs nothing; anything else is $10; renewal is $5 a year with a late penalty of half the endorsement fee up to $150. The statute allows up to $90 to open, so do not publish the cap as the price. The important limit is geographic: 223 cities have partnered with the department so their licence can be bought on the same form, but Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Everett, Kent and Renton have not, and a business in those cities files separately — Seattle's own certificate runs from $73 to $3,210 by revenue band. Spokane and Vancouver are partners. Registration is required if you use a trading name, hire within ninety days, collect sales tax, need any endorsement, or gross $12,000 a year or more. Form the entity with the Secretary of State first.

$180 by post and $200 online, because Washington charges a $20 surcharge for filing online rather than a discount — the reverse of most states, and easy to miss since the fee tables print only the $180. Annual reports are expressly exempt from that surcharge. A corporation costs exactly the same $180; a nonprofit is $80, or $40 if it grosses under half a million. Expediting adds $100 for three days or $150 for same day. Name reservation is $30 for a hundred and eighty days and cannot be done online at all.

The rule treats an LLC's certificate of formation and a corporation's articles as the same thing — the public organic record — and prices both at $180, with no share-based component. So Washington gives no filing-cost reason to prefer one structure over the other, at formation or afterwards, since the annual report is $70 either way. There is also an initial report due within a hundred and twenty days of formation, free if filed with the formation document and $10 if left until later.

$70 for an LLC and $70 for a corporation, with no online surcharge — annual reports are one of the few filings the $20 charge does not touch. The due date is the last day of the entity's own formation month rather than a common calendar date, and filing up to a hundred and eighty days early does not move it. Late costs $25, taking it to $95, and reinstatement after administrative dissolution is $140 plus every missed year. The Secretary of State sends a courtesy notice sixty days out but the statute is explicit that failing to send it does not excuse the filing. A nonprofit pays $10.

A centre pays $125 for the first twelve children and $12 for each one after, every year; a family home pays a flat $30 whatever its size. That flat-versus-scaled split is the whole structural difference between the two. The fee is non-refundable, due with the initial application and then thirty days before the licence anniversary, and missing the anniversary is fatal rather than merely late — the licence expires and a new application is required. The department publishes none of these amounts on its own pages; the administrative code is the only primary source. Child care is not one of the endorsements the statewide business licence can carry, so it is a separate application.