Registering businesses in Spokane to get a bit more expensive next year

The cost to register a business in Spokane is likely to go up a few bucks next year, though it’ll be a smaller increase than at the start of 2023.

Starting next year, the basic fee to register a business in Spokane will increase from $127 to $131 per year if the proposal is approved by the City Council later this month.

Most for-profit businesses also have to pay an additional $15 fee, as well as a per-person fee that varies from $10 to $20 depending on the number of personnel, neither of which are changing from last year.

The basic registration fee is typically increased annually at a rate pegged to inflation and jumped up from $120 to $127 at the start of 2023.

“These business fees, the way they’re incrementally phased is the approach we should be using for all of our fee schedules,” Mayor Nadine Woodward said in a brief interview. “We’ve had the challenge in the last year or two of updating the transportation impacts fees and (general facilities charges) after 20 years of not updating the schedule and trying to do that all in one year.”