What permits do you need to open a retail store in Dallas County?

Permits for a retail store in Dallas County, TX come from 3 separate offices: Dallas County Health and Human Services — Environmental Health Division, Texas Secretary of State, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

$310 for a commercial septic inspection and $110 for a re-inspection. This matters in unincorporated Dallas County where premises are not on city sewer — a business taking a site outside the sewered area inherits an on-site sewage facility and the county inspection regime with it. Inside the City of Dallas the equivalent concern is the sanitary sewer and its trap or discharge permits instead. Figures were read from the county's published environmental health fee schedule; dallascounty.org refuses connections from our crawler, so this source is verified by a person rather than machine-checked.

Required to form an LLC or corporation, not to trade as a sole proprietor. Texas has no statewide general business licence, so for many businesses this filing plus a sales and use tax permit is the entire state-level obligation.

Only needed if you trade under a name different from the one on your formation filing. The certificate is effective for a term not exceeding ten years from the date of filing and does not roll over by itself — it must be actively renewed, and a new certificate can be filed within six months of the original expiring. The $25 is the Secretary of State fee; sole proprietors and general partnerships file with the county clerk instead, at county rates.

There is no fee for this permit — the Comptroller says so directly, which is worth stating because a blank fee reads as though nobody knows. It does not expire on a date, but it is not permanent either: it is valid only while you are actively engaged in business as a seller, and the Comptroller's office may cancel it on finding that you are not. Filing obligations keep it alive, so a return must be filed for every period even when there were no taxable sales or purchases to report. Apply through Comptroller eSystems and allow two to three weeks.