hey this is elizabeth potts weinstein
and today we're going to talk about
how to get a business license in
california
especially as a small or online business
first we need to talk about do you even
need a business license in california
well it depends upon where you're
located and the particular kind of
business you have
there are two kinds of business licenses
one
kind of business license is something
very specific to your industry
it could be a professional license like
an attorney
or it could be a license that's
to sell alcohol or in a particular
industry
where the local or state government is
interested in regulating that industry
you probably know if you're in one of
those industries if you're
have some kind of professional license
or if you're in a highly regulated
industry
and if you're not sure if you are we'll
talk about where to look
to find that out the other kind of
license
is just a general business license
so a general business license is
something every business needs to have
even if it's a tiny little business you
operate out of your home where you make
a thousand dollars a year or a big huge
giant corporation kind of business but
everyone doesn't need one of those
general business licenses because
in california those are local
what do i mean by local how do you find
out if you need one of these general
business licenses well what i mean by
local is that
the state of california doesn't give
them out it's something done on
a local level in the sense of your
county your city your town your village
the physical place where you are located
is where you're going to get
that business license now you may say to
me i'm an online business
i work from home i'm not located
anywhere
well that's not true legally speaking
while it may be true that you don't have
a retail storefront and you don't meet
with clients in person
you are physically located somewhere
because you are a human person
who physically is located somewhere and
that location where you are operating
doing the work even if you don't see
anybody in person
is your location and that's where you
need to look
for whether or not you need a business
license in that local jurisdiction
many small businesses and online
businesses and businesses that operate
out of a house
don't get a business license and you can
kind of sneak by without a business
license
sometimes for a while but it
doesn't always work a lot of times it
doesn't work and so
what can go wrong if you don't get a
business license well
first your local city
or county can find out that you don't
have a business license
and then not only do you have to pay for
the license you may have to pay a whole
bunch of
fees a whole bunch of penalties interest
that you owe them
where you wouldn't have had to pay that
if you just got the business license in
the first place
and how can they find out well you're
going to need to do
other kinds of filings with other
government entities you may need to do a
dba so you can get the name of your
business on your bank account
you may file with your state government
some other forms your incorporation
documents for your llc
perhaps or just tax forms for whatever
kind of business you have
some local governments will look at
those
databases and see who has a business
in their jurisdiction in their area and
then they'll send you
a giant bill another reason you may need
a business license
is to give it as evidence to your
clients
or to someone you're doing business with
in some other way to prove that you're
legit business
so let's say you're a consultant some
companies
only want to hire consultants that are
not accidental employees here in
california
so they want to know that you've formed
a legit business
and have other clients so you may want
to form an llc
you may want to have a dba you may want
to have your business license so you can
show all those documents to the person
to the
person who works at the corporation who
wants to hire you to do that consulting
to prove that you're a legit fully
foreign business
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so how do you actually get one of these
business licenses well what you do
is you go on the website for your county
for
your city for your town and
you go to the part where it talks about
businesses there will be
some section that talks about business
licenses
usually both business licenses and
permits
now in different places it could be
called a business license
it could be called a it could be called
a tax certificate
it could also be called a business
registration
just think of it as some form you gotta
file and some
fee you have to pay so let's go through
the websites of a couple
different cities and counties to give
you an idea
of what you're looking for what i did
here was i just
googled los angeles business license
and this is one of the first websites
that you get to is
the website for the finance department
of the city of los
angeles so one of the things that
they have here is for you to figure out
if you're
in the city of los angeles or just in
the county
if you're in the county you might get a
business license from the county
and if you're in the city of la you
would get a business license in the city
this issue happens in a lot of areas
where there's little pockets of
unincorporated
land that you may not be may not be
obvious
that you're not part of the city but you
actually are
and you need to figure that out so here
they have an address finder where you
put that in to figure out what you need
now if you go to the
county of los angeles website they talk
about how if you're just in the
unincorporated part of la county you may
not need a business license
unless you're in there have a business
that
impacts health and safety so you do
freeze services for example
if you click here do i need a business
license it opens up a page that normally
would let you be able to make an
appointment to meet with them in person
but they don't have that right now
because
of cover 19. so you can send them an
email or call them on the phone to
figure out if this applies to you
one thing to remember is that a lot of
local jurisdictions a lot of cities and
towns and counties especially
if they're smaller the best thing to do
is just call them or
if we're not a pandemic go down there in
person
because a lot of these places
it's difficult to figure out if
something applies to you if you need a
particular license or permit and they're
used to people just coming up a business
owner who doesn't have a lawyer or
anything just coming up and asking
what do i need and they'll tell you
exactly what you need
so the city of san diego is one of the
cities that
has a business tax certificate not
always the same thing as a license but
that's just what they call it there
every business in the city of san diego
has to have
one of these and you have to first find
out if you're actually in
the city uh if you're in and you also
as part of this you have to
have the zoning correct and this is
something that i'm going to do in
another video which is more about
permits but for certain kinds of
businesses they can only be operated in
certain places that are
zoned correctly if you have a business
you're operating out of your home and
it's in a residential zone you may have
to get a special permit or it might not
be allowed at all
depending upon the kind of business you
have
and then here you can submit the
application
online 24 7. in san jose california they
also have a business tax certificate is
what it's called but it's really the
same thing as a business license which i
already talked about
so the city of san jose as you can see
here there's a number of pieces of
information that you have to have
one of the things to realize for getting
business licenses
is that even if your business is a
corporation or an llc
you will have to get information about
you personally as the owner
including things like your driver's
license number or your personal social
security number
depending upon the jurisdiction in some
places i haven't seen this in
in california but in other states you
even have to give
the social security number and the date
of birth for both you
and your spouse even if your spouse is
not even involved in the business which
i think is overreaching however that's
what they require
in the city and county of san francisco
which for those of you don't know it's
all one place they have a business
registration that you can do online
something to realize is i've done these
for people in san francisco and it takes
time for all the paperwork to go through
and this is true for some of many of
these places is that
there may be a human person on the other
end who has to
actually look your application and in
some places it's just automatic
and if you haven't done it before you're
not going to really know so be prepared
that in some places you may get the
business license
the same day or in one or two days
because it's all automated by technology
and in other places a human person has
to evaluate your application and so it
may take
weeks and weeks as an example
in san francisco there's a number of
pieces of information that you have to
give that are specific to san francisco
including your gross receipts and your
payroll expenses this is true for not
just san francisco but in many
places you may not have any gross
receipts what they mean is how much
money you're bringing in
and so you may be giving an estimate on
what it's going to be
and the payroll expense you may not have
any employees so it may be zero
they want to figure out really what
other taxes they're going to have to
charge to you
and also sometimes the amount of your
licensing fee
is based upon your gross receipts and or
your number of employees again this is
attorney elizabeth potts weinstein
if you have any questions about getting
your business license feel free to post
them below and i'll hopefully be able to
point you in the right direction if you
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lot you guys i'll talk to you next time
you
