Illinois contractor license requirements
What you need before your first paid job in Illinois, 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 Illinois
- License you need
- Apprentice PlumberRenews every year
- Insurance you must carry
- $100,000plus $50,000 for property damage
- Workers' comp
- Required
- Illinois licenses the plumber first and the business second. A plumbing contractor cannot register unless its owner, a partner, an officer or an LLC manager holds a plumber license, and one plumber can stand behind only one company.
- There is no journeyman step. You spend at least four years and 5,600 hours as a licensed apprentice, sit one three-part exam, and come out a licensed plumber.
HVAC in Illinois
- License you need
- No state HVAC license
- Insurance you must carry
- $100,000plus $50,000 for property damage
- Workers' comp
- Required
- Illinois has no state HVAC license at all. The state's list of licensed professions has no heating, cooling or refrigeration trade on it, so your city or village decides whether you need one.
- The insurance rule comes from consumer law, not a license, and it turns on the kind of work rather than its price. Fitting a new furnace in an existing home is covered whatever it costs, while a service call under $500 is not, and a new build is outside the law altogether.
Electrical in Illinois
- License you need
- No state electrical license
- Insurance you must carry
- $100,000plus $50,000 for property damage
- Workers' comp
- Required
- No Illinois agency licenses electricians for general wiring. Electrical work is licensed town by town, and Chicago's Supervising Electrician license is the best known of them. Alarm and security work is the exception, and the state does license that.
- Electrical work is named in the workers' compensation law as extra hazardous, so cover is automatic the day you hire someone. Knowingly going without it costs up to $500 a day with a $10,000 floor.
Across states
Can you charge sales tax on labor? The rule in 25 states. Which states tax the work itself, which tax only the parts, and how a repair differs from a new install.