The Fraser Valley inter-municipal business licence

What the inter-municipal licence actually is

Municipal business licences are issued city by city. Historically that meant a mobile business — a plumber, an electrician, a framer — needed a separate licence in every municipality it worked in, which for a Fraser Valley contractor could easily mean four or five. The inter-municipal business licence (IMBL) replaces that stack with one additional licence recognised across the participating municipalities.

It is an addition, not a replacement. You still need a base business licence from your own municipality — the one where the business is located. The IMBL sits on top of it and extends where you may work.

Who is eligible

Eligibility is narrower than most owners assume, and it is defined by what the business does rather than by its size or structure:

• Trades contractors and construction-related professionals operating as a mobile business — performing maintenance or repair of land and buildings.
• Health care professionals who provide in-home services.

A retail store, a restaurant or an office-based professional practice is not eligible — those are fixed-location businesses, licensed where they sit. If your work is done at your clients’ premises across several cities, you are the intended case.

The eleven participating municipalities

Vancouver and the rest of Metro Vancouver are not part of this programme — they run separate inter-municipal arrangements with their own participant lists. A Fraser Valley IMBL does not cover work in Vancouver.

Cost, and the timing trap inside it

The IMBL costs $250, in addition to your base municipal licence fee. The part that costs people money is the term: it runs from the date of application to December 31 of that same year, regardless of when it was bought. Buy one in October and you have paid $250 for roughly ten weeks. Buy one in January and the same $250 covers nearly twelve months.

For a contractor whose out-of-town work is seasonal, that timing is worth planning deliberately — and it is a genuinely deductible business expense either way, so the decision is about cash flow and coverage rather than tax.

How to apply

Applications and renewals go through your home municipality — the one that issued your base licence — not through each city you intend to work in. That single fact removes most of the administrative burden the programme was designed to solve. Several participating municipalities accept the application online.

Where this fits in a new business’s first months

Licensing tends to be discovered late, usually when a general contractor asks for proof before releasing a first payment. It sits alongside a short list of things that all land in the same window: the CRA program accounts, the GST registration threshold, the corporate year-end choice, and the payroll account if anyone is hired. Handling them as one sequence rather than one crisis at a time is the whole argument for sorting them early — what year one actually looks like sets out that order.

Where this comes from

• Township of Langley — Fraser Valley Inter-municipal Business Licence
• City of Chilliwack — Inter-Municipal Business Licences
• City of Abbotsford — Business Licences

Verified against municipal sources in August 2026. Municipal fees and participant lists change — confirm the current figure with your own municipality before budgeting. General information, not advice for your situation.