Moving to Washington as a general contractor: every state's rule

Washington's unlimited tier is the General contractor registration issued by the Department of Labor & Industries, and it is the same credential described at the residential level: one registration covers both house and commercial work, because Washington draws no residential/commercial line. A general contractor is defined by trade breadth rather than by market or contract value: it is a contractor 'whose business operations require the use of more than one building trade or craft upon a single job or project or under a single building permit', including anyone who superintends or consults on such work, while a specialty contractor is limited to one of 63 named trades and may subcontract only work incidental to that trade. There is no dollar cap, no classification letter and no project-size tier on a general registration. Washington does not examine contractors at all: chapter 18.27 RCW and chapter 296-200A WAC contain no trade exam, no business-and-law exam, no experience requirement, no net worth or financial statement test and no qualifying party, and L&I's application asks for none of them. What the state requires is a registered business with money behind it, which the department verifies rather than judges: a Uniform Business Identifier from the Department of Revenue, a continuous $30,000 surety bond (or an assigned savings account for the same amount), general liability insurance of $200,000 public liability and $50,000 property damage or $250,000 combined single limit, a notarized application signed by every owner, member, partner and officer, and $150.20 for two years. Registration is required of every contractor with almost no threshold: the only general exemption is work on a single project whose total price for labor, materials and everything else is under $500, and even that is lost if the person advertises as a contractor. Registration is statewide and exclusive; RCW 18.27.130 bars any city or county from issuing its own contractor registration, license or bond, though a city may still charge a general business license fee and a gross receipts tax, and a building department must verify a contractor's registration before it issues a permit.