Annual business license fees were due on January 31st to the City of Weyburn. However, there is still a bit of a grace period before any penalties are applied.

Donette Richter, City Clerk and Business License Inspector with the City of Weyburn, said that on March 15th, if business license fees are not paid by the end of the day at 4:00 p.m., there will be a penalty added to the business licenses that are outstanding.

Richter outlined some of the reasons that business licenses are issued by the City of Weyburn.

"To regulate businesses, just to ensure compliance with land use and building regulations. To facilitate planning decisions, and then to just differentiate between businesses operating in a commercial industrial area in the city, versus home occupations versus outside of town people that are coming in."

Richter explained the different types of business licenses, which include resident and non-resident business licenses.

"The resident business licenses would be your storefronts in the city that we see downtown and out around the industrial areas. Non-resident business licenses are those businesses that don't have a storefront, some of them may live in town and may operate from their homes as a home occupation, and other ones come from out of town and just do work in the city but don't actually reside or have a business location in the city." 

There's several kinds of non-resident business licenses, she noted, ranging anywhere from cleaning and janitorial to contractors, direct sellers, and farmers' markets.

In terms of door-to-door sales, Richter said that they are called direct salespeople, and each direct seller has to have their own city business license.

"I'll only give them to people that also have a provincial direct sellers license to allow them to go door-to-door. There's some rules around that, of course. One of them is that they certainly can't misrepresent themselves, they certainly can't be pushy, and from time to time we do get the odd complaint and we deal with that through our Bylaw Officer for the City of Weyburn."

The Bylaw Officer, she explained, can go out if it's a door-to-door salesperson, and ask them to cease operations.

"People can be fined if you're operating without a business license. The fines range, depending on what type of business it is." 

An individual can be fined up to $2000 for operating a business without a license, and a corporation can be fined up to $5000 for operating a business without a license, she revealed.

Richter added that if a business is operating without a license, it's really not a hard process to get one. 

"You just have to go on the city website at weyburn.ca and look through the business license information. And if you still have questions, feel free to contact myself here at city hall at (306) 848-3209."