Contractor licence for tree work in California: the C-49 classification, fees and workers' compensation

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It describes the California Contractors State License Board (CSLB) position as read on its own pages on October 8, 2026. A short phrase in quotation marks is the source's own.

Why tree work is a contractor licence

The board's statement of reasons for the C-49 rule says Business and Professions Code section 7026.1 defines a contractor to include a person "who performs tree removal, tree pruning, stump removal, or engages in tree or limb cabling or guying", and that subdivision (a)(4) excludes nurserypersons and gardeners. The board's page on what kind of contractor is needed says anyone who contracts for a project that needs a building permit, or uses employee labor, or contracts for work valued at US$1,000 or more for combined labor and materials must hold a current, valid CSLB licence.

The classifications

The C-49 page says a Tree and Palm contractor plants, maintains and removes trees and palms, and that the duties include pruning, stump grinding and tree, palm or limb guying. It says the regulation does not apply to, and a licence is not required for, incidental pruning of trees or guying of planted trees and their limbs by a nurseryperson, or incidental pruning by a gardener as described in section 7026.1. The older D-49 Tree Service page says a tree service contractor prunes trees, removes trees, limbs or stumps including grinding, and engages in tree or limb guying.

CSLB industry bulletin 23-07, dated November 13, 2023, says the board would accept applications for C-49 starting January 1, 2024. It says the regulation was approved on March 30, 2022 and the C-49 trade examination was finalized in December 2022. After December 31, 2023 the board no longer accepts applications for the C-61/D-49 Tree Service limited specialty classification, and applications received for it after that date are processed as C-49 applications. Contractors who held C-61/D-49 before January 1, 2024 may keep and work under it. The bulletin says all C-49 applicants sit a trade examination regardless of other classifications they hold, and that the board would speed up the experience review for applicants who held an active C-61/D-49 licence for at least four years. It says the board regards the work of the two classifications as the same although the C-49 description adds palms.

What the board said about the change

The board's Initial Statement of Reasons, dated February 19, 2021, gives the problem it was addressing. It says the tree care industry told the board that the C-27 Landscaping classification is too broad, with a limited number of examination questions on tree work, and that C-61/D-49 is a limited specialty classification that does not require any trade examination. It says that as of May 1, 2020 there were 3,413 C-61/D-49 Tree Service licences, 3,185 active and 228 inactive, and that board policy was to turn a "D" classification into a "C" classification when it reached 1,000 licences. It says the proposal adds a trade examination to the experience and law and business examinations that applicants already completed.

Fees, workers' compensation and advertising

The board's fee list shows an original application, covering an exam or waiver for one classification, at US$450, an initial licence fee of US$200 for a sole owner and US$350 for a non-sole owner, and a timely active renewal of US$450 for a sole owner and US$700 for a non-sole owner. It lists the fingerprint processing fees as US$32 to the Department of Justice and US$17 to the FBI, with each Live Scan site setting its own rolling fee. The list does not give fees by classification.

The board's workers' compensation page says C-8 Concrete, C-20 air conditioning, C-22 Asbestos Abatement, C-39 Roofing and C-61/D-49 Tree Service contractors "are required to carry workers' compensation insurance" or a valid Certification of Self-Insurance, whether or not they have employees. The page names C-61/D-49 and does not mention C-49 in that list.

The board also publishes the rule on putting a licence number on advertising and vehicles, covered on the page about licence number display rules. For the other states that license tree work through arborist boards, see the guide on state arborist licenses, and for looking up a licence, the guide on checking a company.