Arizona contractor license requirements
What you need before your first paid job in Arizona, one page for each trade. The license, the least insurance you must carry, whether the state asks for a bond, when you charge sales tax, and the deadlines that protect your right to be paid.
Plumbing in Arizona
- License you need
- R-37 Plumbing, Including Solar (residential) Renew Every two years. You can choose to renew each year instead at half the two-year fee
- Insurance you must carry
- No state minimum customers usually ask for $1,000,000
- Workers' comp
- Required as soon as you hire anyone
- The license belongs to your business and names a qualifying party, the person with four years of trade experience who passed the exams. If that person leaves, you have 15 days to tell the Registrar and 60 days to name a replacement. Miss the 60 days and the license is suspended by law until you do.
- Casual or minor work under $1,000, labor and materials included, needs no license as long as no building permit is required. Above $1,000, or on any job that needs a permit, the exemption ends and you need a contractor license. For plumbing in homes that is the R-37.
HVAC in Arizona
- License you need
- R-39 Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, Including Solar (residential) Renew Every two years. You can choose to renew each year instead at half the two-year fee
- Insurance you must carry
- No state minimum customers usually ask for $1,000,000
- Workers' comp
- Required as soon as you hire anyone
- The residential R-39 covers heating, cooling, refrigeration, evaporative coolers and ventilation, with or without solar. The commercial C-39 covers refrigeration, evaporative cooling, and heating systems of the wet, dry, or radiant type. Ventilation and solar are not named in the C-39 rule, so check with ROC before you take on that work commercially.
- A yearly tune-up, a refrigerant recharge, or a full swap of an old unit for a new one is not taxed on your invoice, whatever the price. You pay sales tax at the supply house and add no tax line. Only new construction and very large alterations are taxed, and then on 65 percent of the bill.
Electrical in Arizona
- License you need
- R-11 Electrical (residential) Renew Every two years. You can choose to renew each year instead at half the two-year fee
- Insurance you must carry
- No state minimum customers usually ask for $1,000,000
- Workers' comp
- Required as soon as you hire anyone
- The whole rule for the residential R-11 is one sentence. It lets you install and repair residential electrical systems, and nothing else is written down. The commercial C-11 runs to a paragraph and stops at 600 volts.
- A dual CR-11, good for houses and commercial buildings, costs less than the commercial C-11 on its own. The fee rule has a row called Class CR, the specialty dual, at $380 for two years. The commercial specialty row is $480.
Across states
Sales tax on labor for plumbers and HVAC contractors by state. Which states tax the work itself, which tax only the parts, and how a repair differs from a new install.