City requires business license for rental property

[Kalanie Tran]

So I have a question, just found out my city requires business license and annual inspection of the property when I rent it out. In order to transfer utilities to my tenant name, they require business license, so each year I pay $250 for license and inspection. What should I do

Should I just leave it under my name? Can I have two primary?

And have tenant bills be included with rent, and I just bill them for usage?

Problem is my kitchen remodeling was unpermitted and I hate to have city find out about it and fine me.

What do you folks recommend I do? TIA

[PJ M.]

@Kalanie Tran you should find out what else is required for that business license.  TO build off what @Nathan Gesner talks about, where I am you must have a rental license for each unit.  To get the rental license you need a business license.  If you ever need to sue a tenant for anything, you need to include the rental license as part of the paperwork when filing.  Thus, in my case, if I didn't have a business license I could never take a tenant to court.  You don't want to find yourself in the situation that Nathan describes, only to find out that without the proper license you can't get to court to fix the issue.  Then, on top of that, they may look to penalize you for having an unregistered business for the entire time you had a tenant in there.  Might be time to just "bite the bullet" and get your house in order to save a potential heap of issues later.