Proposed legislation would increase BLS application fees

Partners –

As your partner, we want to share our Agency request legislation (Substitute House Bill 2840 and Senate Bill 6632) that would increase Business Licensing Service (BLS) funding to ensure the Department of Revenue has the necessary funding to continue providing the valuable one-stop licensing services to our shared business customers at existing service levels. The proposal(s) would:

• Increase the existing one-time $19 BLS handling fee to open a new or reopen a closed business to $90;
• Eliminate the BLS handling fee for existing businesses that are expanding their business into other cities by either adding a new physical location or obtaining a nonresident endorsement;
• Maintain the current $19 handling fee for updates to existing business licenses (such as hiring employees, adding/changing a trade name, etc.); and
• Decrease the $11 handling fee for the yearly renewal to $10.

The bill also adds a provision to require the Department to reduce its fees via rulemaking when the BLS account balance exceeds $1 million after 2023. Due to some planned expenditure reductions in 2023, we fully expect this to occur.

This bill is very important to the vitality of the BLS program and the support we provide our partners and shared customers. The BLS program is intended to be solely funded through the BLS handling fees charged to businesses for filing a business license application or filing a yearly renewal; currently, there is no fee for city or state partners. BLS fees have not changed since 2013, and since 2018 has been subsidized by the general fund.

As BLS grows and increases the number of state and local partners, its value to the business community also appreciates. That value is derived from the convenience of getting what the business community needs to license in one place – in this case, BLS.  That is why we are running this bill to ensure that the fees charged for BLS’s maintenance and support are adequate, yet do not exceed BLS’s needs.

To date, both bills have been heard in their house of origin.  If you would like to follow the progress of the bills, you can do so with the links provided above.

~BLS Partnership Services