What you need for a municipal business licence in Puerto Vallarta

Everything down to the neighbourhood association sign-off is asked for on every licence, whatever your business does. The last two items depend on your activity. Other municipalities differ, but this is the shape of it.

Solicitud de licencia municipal. The application itself.
Persona física documentation, or the company equivalent.
R.F.C., alta de hacienda. Your tax registration.
Recibo predial vigente. A current property tax receipt for the premises.
Oficio de designación del No. Oficial. The document assigning the building its official number.
Comprobante de domicilio. Proof of address, usually the CFE bill.
Contrato de renta vigente. Your current lease or rental agreement for the business location.
Identificación del dueño del local. The property owner's identification.
Fotografía a color de la fachada. A colour photograph of the frontage of the business location.
Visto bueno de la junta vecinal. The neighbourhood association's approval.
Aviso de funcionamiento de Protección Civil.
Dictamen favorable de Ecología.

Those apply whatever your business is.

The next two depend on what you do:

Aviso de funcionamiento de salud, COFEPRIS, where the activity requires it.
Diploma o certificado de capacitación, where the activity requires it.

The part that catches people

Read that list again and count how many of those documents are not yours to produce.

The predial receipt, the owner's identification, and the oficio designating the building's official number all come from your landlord or from the building itself. Your licence depends on paperwork somebody else has to hand over, and you have no leverage to make them once you have signed.

Ask for those three before you sign the lease, not after. If a landlord cannot produce them, that tells you something important about the premises while you can still walk away.

This is also where the Número Oficial problem shows up. A building that never registered its official number cannot produce that oficio, and without it your application does not proceed. It can be fixed. It takes time and repeated visits to UMA.

More on uso de suelo, Número Oficial, and checking a premises before you commit

The approval you did not expect

Visto bueno de la junta vecinal is the neighbourhood association signing off on your business operating where it intends to operate. Foreign owners rarely see this coming, and it is not a formality you can hurry. The exception to this requirement is if the space is located within a business plaza.

What I do with this

I collect the whole set, I chase the parts your landlord holds, and I file it. More usefully, I tell you which of these will be a problem before you commit to a premises, which is the point at which the information is still worth something.

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