How to get a business license in Philadelphia

Screen Shot 2011-12-08 at 10.20.17 AM
Screen Shot 2011-12-08 at 10.20.17 AM
Flowchart researched and created by William Marsh and Ali Ahmed




For this project, we researched the process of applying for and getting a business license in Philadelphia. We were surprised to find how simple the process is, as illustrated through our flowchart. The process was rather short, and quite simple for this project. We found a helpful web page created by the city of Philadelphia detailing the steps for getting a permit. Once we had done this, we looked at the form(s) that were necessary to fill out for the business license. I say forms because there are technically two forms for acquiring a business permit, only one needs to be filled out. The forms are a lifetime, or an annual permit, which are effectively the same form, with different fees. We filled out these forms and found them to be very straight forward. There were two parts of the form that confused us that had to do with exceptions regarding whether or not the form was actually necessary, but all in all, it was very straight forward. In agreement with that statement, I can't really think of anything to change with this process. I feel like this bureaucratic process does not reflect the vast majority of processes. Based on my classmates experiences and the general feeling towards bureaucratic processes, I imagine ours was an outlier. In general, bureaucratic processes are quite complex and really do need flow charts to explain them, but that is not the case for ours.

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