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

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 10 records listed for a contractor or trade in Madison, WI, 3 apply to every business of this type and 7 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 3 that always apply, 1 carry a flat fee, coming to $10.00. That is a floor, not a total. 2 of the 10 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:

Sign Contractor Licence: $15 test fee, then a $125 license fee, renewed annually at $125. A $10,000 bond is also required.

Commercial Building Permit: Plan review — commercial alterations/remodeling: $0.04/sq ft, minimum $100 (HVAC alterations: $0.03/sq ft, same minimum); new construction uses the same $0.04/sq ft rate. Structural review of building elements: $50 per element. Inspection fee for existing-building alterations/repairs: $11 per $1,000 of value (or fraction), minimum $25. New buildings/additions are billed by occupancy group instead — e.g., assembly/office/retail is $0.51/sq ft, minimum $25. Trade fees: plumbing fixtures $8 each (min $25); electric service replacement $50/panel; electrical openings $25 for the first ten, $1 each additional.

Permits for a contractor or trade in Madison, WI come from 4 separate offices: City of Madison Development Services Center, Building Inspection Division, City of Madison Clerk's Office, Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services, Division of Industry Services, Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate and Consumer Services. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City of Madison Development Services Center, Building Inspection DivisionIssues 3 permits on this page: Sign Contractor Licence, Certificate of Occupancy, Commercial Building Permit215 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Madison, WI 53703 · (608) 266-4551www.cityofmadison.com/development-services-center/fees/building-inspection-fees
• City of Madison Clerk's OfficeIssues 1 permit on this page: No Generic Business Licence210 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Room 105, Madison, WI 53703 · (608) 266-4601www.cityofmadison.com/clerk/licenses-permits
• Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services, Division of Industry ServicesIssues 2 permits on this page: General Contractor Licence (not required by Wisconsin), Dwelling Contractor Certification4822 Madison Yards Way, Madison, WI 53705 · (608) 266-2112dsps.wi.gov/Pages/Professions/DwellingContractor/Default.aspx
• Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate and Consumer ServicesIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Annual Report, General Business Licence (does not exist in Wisconsin)4822 Madison Yards Way, North Tower, Madison, WI 53705 · (608) 261-7577onestop.wi.gov

Required to pull a sign permit in Madison. The sign permit's own per-square-foot fee schedule (reported elsewhere as $1.75–$2.50/sq ft, $50 minimum) could not be independently verified from a primary source this pass — Municode returned HTTP 403 and its mirror timed out repeatedly — and is not asserted here.

No licence fee applies. Quoted directly: 'The City of Madison does not have a generic business license.' Licensing is entirely activity-specific — the Clerk's own fee schedule covers roughly 30 categories (alcohol, amusement devices, auto salvage, body art, food, hotel/motel, secondhand dealer, and more), plus separate Fire Department and PHMDC categories.

A Zoning Certificate (a change of use without a building permit) is separately $75, per Madison General Ordinances sections 29.07(3)(e) and 28.206.

A commercial-only Early Start Permit is $50 plus $0.01/sq ft; revisions to previously-examined plans are $100.

No fee, because Wisconsin licenses no general or commercial building contractor. The department's trades credential schedule enumerates every contractor credential it issues — automatic fire sprinkler and its maintenance variant, dwelling and dwelling restricted, electrical, elevator, HVAC and utility — and no general or building contractor appears anywhere in it. State-level contractor regulation therefore reaches only residential work on one- and two-family dwellings, through the dwelling contractor scheme, and the specific trades. A commercial project still needs plan review and permits, and any electrical, plumbing, HVAC, fire sprinkler or elevator work must be done by the relevant licensed trade, but the general contractor itself holds no state licence. Municipalities may register contractors separately.

Forty dollars cheaper online than on paper, and the saving applies only to LLCs — a corporation costs $100 either way. Expediting is available and steep: $100 for next business day, $250 for four hours over the counter and $500 for one. All fees are non-refundable. Note that the department's fee table shows foreign entities at a hundred dollars with a plus sign, and what the plus covers is not explained anywhere published, so no foreign registration figure is recorded here.

A flat $100 with no authorised-shares component at all, which is worth stating because several states — Texas, Delaware and Nevada among them — scale this fee by how many shares you authorise. Wisconsin makes you declare a share count on the application and then charges the same regardless. Filing online adds only the one-dollar portal fee, so unlike an LLC there is no meaningful paper-versus-online difference. A nonstock corporation is much cheaper at $35.

An LLC and a corporation pay the same, and the paper price is simply the online price plus the fifteen-dollar surcharge the department introduced in March 2024 — the two documents reconcile exactly. The due date is not a fixed calendar day: it is the end of whichever calendar quarter contains the anniversary of your registration, so a business formed in February files by 31 March every year. Foreign entities always file by 31 March. There is no monetary late penalty at all — the consequence is delinquent status and, after an extended period, administrative dissolution, with reinstatement requiring the accumulated per-year fees.

No fee, because Wisconsin issues no general business licence — its own single-point-of-entry portal defines the basic requirements most new businesses need as exactly three registrations, entity with the financial institutions department, tax with revenue and unemployment insurance with workforce development, and there is no licensing step among them. What replaces it is activity-specific licensing plus whatever the municipality requires. One honest caveat on how this was established: no state page says in words that Wisconsin has no general business licence, so the finding rests on the state's own exhaustive enumeration of what a new business must do.

Two credentials that interlock rather than substitute. The dwelling contractor certification is the business's — it is what lets a firm contract for work on one- and two-family dwellings and pull building permits — and the business must additionally hold, or employ someone who holds, the individual dwelling contractor qualifier credential, which renews at $30 and requires a twelve-hour approved course within the year before applying. The money that matters is not the fee: the business must show financial responsibility of at least $25,000 by bond or insurance, plus liability cover of at least $250,000 per occurrence. Initial application fees for either credential are not published anywhere — the forms say only that they are calculated in the department's licensing portal. Reinstatement is $200. Note this reaches residential work only; Wisconsin licenses no general or commercial building contractor at all.