Arizona to California: master plumber license reciprocity

California does not issue a license titled 'master plumber'. The statewide credential that sits above municipal journeyman cards is the C-36 Plumbing Contractor license from the Contractors State License Board. The license is issued to a business entity (sole owner, partnership, corporation or LLC) but is qualified by a named individual who personally meets the experience and exam requirements and is responsible for the classification, so an out-of-state master plumber or plumbing contractor who intends to contract in California applies as that qualifying individual. A master plumber who only wants to work as an employee needs no C-36 license (B&P §7053) and should instead check city journeyman-card rules. To qualify C-36, the individual documents at least four years of journeyman-level or higher plumbing experience within the past 10 years, pays the $450 original application fee, passes both the CSLB Law and Business exam and the C-36 trade exam through PSI within 18 months of application acceptance, is fingerprinted (DOJ $32 plus FBI $17 plus Live Scan rolling fees), posts a $25,000 contractor's bond (and a $25,000 bond of qualifying individual where applicable), carries workers' compensation or files an exemption, and pays the initial license fee of $200 (sole owner) or $350 (non-sole owner) for a two-year license. CSLB reciprocity can waive the C-36 trade exam for a contractor who has held an active license in good standing for the previous five years in an Arizona classification mapped to C-36 (C-37, C-37R Plumbing, K-37, K-77, L-37, L-77). Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina reciprocity entries are general building only; Nevada's published list as extracted has no class mapped to C-36. Even when reciprocity is granted CSLB retains the right to require the trade exam, and the Law and Business exam, bond, fingerprinting and all other licensure requirements still apply.

Arizona does not issue a master plumber licence. A master plumber arriving from another state who only wants to work for an employer needs no Arizona licence (except a Phoenix journeyman card for permitted work in that city). To run a plumbing business the qualifying party must show four years of practical or management trade experience (at least two within the last ten years; up to two years creditable from accredited technical training), pass the open-book Arizona Statutes and Rules Exam (SRE, $61 through Gmetrix) and the plumbing trade exam ($66 through PSI) with at least 70% within two years of applying, complete a background check for every person named on the application, register the entity if an LLC, corporation or partnership, post a licence bond or recovery-fund assessment, and pay application and licence fees ($580 for C-37, $720 for R-37, $850 for CR-37 including the $370 Residential Recovery Fund assessment, before exam fees). The ROC pages verified for this entry describe no state-to-state reciprocity agreement; under A.A.C. R4-9-106(E) the Registrar may waive the trade exam when the qualifying party 'is currently or has previously been a qualifying party for a licensee in this state or another state in the same classification, or a comparable classification as determined by the Registrar, within the preceding five years' (Application to Waive a Trade Examination filed with the licence application, not pre-approved), and out-of-state experience counts toward the four-year requirement, but the SRE is never waived for out-of-state applicants. Individual master plumber licences from other states are not, by themselves, a waiver basis: the waiver turns on having qualified a contractor licence in a comparable classification.