Trade licenses attach to a human qualifier, not to the company. In an owner-operator sale that qualifier is usually the seller — so the transaction itself is what removes the credential. This is a free, cited map of how that plays out in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Fifty-one jurisdictions, fifty-one regimes. Tennessee relicenses on a control change. Arizona preserves the license through a stock sale if the Corporation Commission file number holds. Ohio and Massachusetts never issued the company a license at all. No practitioner carries this in their head.
Tennessee, Texas electrical, Washington, Alaska, Delaware, Idaho and New Jersey require a new license or registration on a change of ownership or entity — regardless of who the qualifier is. Retaining the seller's qualifier buys nothing in these states.
West Virginia permits transfer to a new entity without re-examination where the license holder is principal owner, partner or officer. DC permits assignment with agency approval. Everywhere else the answer is re-apply.
Prohibited outright in Texas, Colorado, Oregon, Oklahoma and West Virginia. Permitted at 30% common ownership in New Mexico, and at 51% in Hawaii. Indiana allows five agents per license at no cost. A platform's ability to centralise licensing is therefore a state-by-state question, and integration models that assume uniformity are assuming something that does not exist.
South Carolina keeps the license in good standing for 90 days only if the 15-day notice was made. Hawaii forfeits the license automatically on failure to notify and requalify in time. These are the two places where a missed administrative step is unrecoverable.
Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky and Maine all place it on an individual. Buying the entity does not acquire it. This is the most common way a mental model formed in California or Florida produces a wrong answer elsewhere.
Arizona requires a new bond filing on any qualifying-party change. Washington requires bond and insurance in the exact business name. Maryland requires certified mail with return receipt. Louisiana requires background and financial investigation of every principal. Texas plumbing requires written notice to every city where work was contracted or performed. These are bonding, insurance and mail items, so licensing checklists miss them.
Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Wyoming and New Hampshire push general contracting to municipalities. A Kansas City license gives no authorisation in St. Louis. Absence of a state regime multiplies the workload rather than removing it.
| State | Trade / scope | Authority | Qualifier role | Deal alone triggers new license? | If the qualifier departs | Notice | Replace | Risk |
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Every column, every source citation, every verification date. Free, no signup.
Download the matrix (.xlsx)License Standing is a research project maintaining a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction record of how trade licenses behave in a change of ownership. It exists because the answer is currently reconstructed from scratch, by hand, on every transaction.
Corrections are genuinely welcome — if a cell is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and note the change.
Joshua Monche · joshua@licensestanding.com