Electrical contracting in Texas

What this site covers, and how to read it

Texas licenses the business, not only the person holding the tools, and that one fact sets the shape of everything else.

There is a state credential that belongs to the company, a named master electrician the credential hangs on, an insurance certificate that has to be in hand before you file, and a separate stack of city registrations, permits and taxes that nobody at the state will mention to you. Each of those has its own page here.

Start with the contractor license itself if you are working out what the state actually requires, or with the order to do it in if you already know and want the sequence.

Getting and keeping the license

The contractor license is issued to the business and attached to a master electrician who signs the application.

That person is the constraint: you either hold the master license or you employ someone who does, and they can be assigned to only one contractor at a time. Once the license exists it has to be renewed on its own clock, alongside the continuing education the individual license holder owes separately.

The pages on the master electrician of record and renewal and continuing education cover the two places this most often comes apart — losing your master, and letting a license lapse far enough that renewing is no longer an option.

What it costs, and what has to be insured

The fees themselves are modest and published; the expensive part is what has to be in place before TDLR will look at the application.

General liability cover has to clear three separate floors from a carrier that meets the state's rating requirement, and the workers' compensation question is a declaration you cannot skip even with no employees. Bonds are worth naming here even without their own page: they are not a licensing requirement at all, and they come from cities and from specific jobs rather than from the state.

See the fee breakdown and what the insurance certificate has to say.

The business behind the license

Because the license belongs to a business, the business has to exist first, which makes the entity decision the first real step rather than an afterthought.

That decision then follows you through the franchise tax, the annual reports, and the sales and use tax treatment of your contracts — which in Texas turns on whether a job is new construction or a repair, and on how the contract is written.

Read the setup sequence for the order of it, the entity comparison for the choice itself, and the formation-services comparison for what each filing service publishes about its own prices and what renews after year one. Then franchise tax and annual reports for what it costs you every year afterwards, and sales tax on electrical contracts for the part that turns on how you write the job.

The city layer nobody warns you about

A state license does not let you pull a permit.

Cities still require contractor registration, still inspect the work, and still adopt their own amendments to the electrical code, so the same job is not the same job in two jurisdictions. Registration is never same-day, which is how contractors end up unable to start work they have already sold. Solar adds its own layer on top — a registration requirement for residential sales, plus utility interconnection that has nothing to do with TDLR.

See municipal licensing and permits and what solar work requires.

Licensing

• The Texas electrical contractor license — What TDLR requires to run an electrical contracting business in Texas: the contractor license, the master electrician of record, insurance, and renewal.
• How to get a Texas electrical contractor license — The order to do it in — master electrician first, then insurance, then the workers' compensation declaration, then Form ELC-LIC-003 and the fee.
• The master electrician of record, explained — Why the contractor license lives or dies with one name, what the one-contractor rule actually restricts, and what happens the day that person quits.
• Keeping a Texas electrical license current — How the business license and each individual license renew separately in Texas, what a late renewal costs in bands, and the CE hours due first.

Cost and insurance

• What a Texas electrical contractor license costs — Year-one fees, the recurring renewal, and what a lapse adds — the license line items for a Texas electrical contracting business, with TDLR figures.
• What a Texas electrical contractor must insure — The three TDLR liability floors, carrier rules, the 30-day cancellation clause, and how Texas handles workers' compensation.

Setting up the business

• Setting up an electrical contracting business in Texas — The order to pick your entity, file with the state, get the EIN, open the bank account, and register for tax before TDLR licensing depends on it
• Choosing a legal structure for a Texas electrical business — Sole proprietorships, LLCs, S-corp elections, and partnerships compared on liability, taxes, and TDLR license ties.
• Formation services for electrical contractors compared — Formation services for Texas electrical contractors: published prices, what renews after year one, and the file-it-yourself route at the actual state fee.

Tax and reporting

• Texas franchise tax and the annual reports — Texas has no personal income tax, but electrical contracting entities still owe an annual franchise tax filing, even when nothing is due.
• Texas sales tax on electrical contracts — New construction, repair, and remodeling get different sales tax treatment in Texas, and lump-sum versus separated contracts decide who pays it.

Working on site

• The city layer beneath a Texas electrical license — State licensing covers you across Texas, but cities still run their own registration, permits, and inspections before you can legally start work.
• Texas's new solar registration rule — What the 2026 residential solar retailer registration covers, who it catches, and why it does not replace the electrical contractor license.

Questions