Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Twenty-three kinds of work the licensing act does not reach

The exemptions are the least-read part of the act and the most likely to decide whether you personally need a license.

Where they live

Section 1305.003 of the Texas Occupations Code lists the exemptions. Subsection (a) contains twenty-three numbered items. They are not a general escape hatch, they are twenty-three specific descriptions, and work either fits one or it does not.

Three of them account for most real questions.

The homeowner exemption

work not specifically regulated by a municipal ordinance that is performed in or on a dwelling by a person who owns and resides in the dwelling

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(6)

Two conditions, both required. You own it, and you live in it. A rental you own does not qualify. A house you live in but do not own does not qualify.

The first clause matters as much as the second. The exemption is from the state licensing act, not from a city. If the municipality regulates that work by ordinance, the exemption does not reach it.

The in-house maintenance exemption

electrical work if: (A) the work is performed by a person who does not engage in electrical work for the public; (B) the work is performed by a person regularly employed as a maintenance person or maintenance electrician for a business; and (C) the electrical work does not involve the installation of electrical equipment during new construction as defined by rules adopted under Chapter 151, Tax Code

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(8)

Three conditions, all required. Not for the public. Regularly employed as maintenance. Not new construction.

New construction is not left to ordinary usage here. Clause (C) defines it by the rules adopted under Chapter 151 of the Tax Code, which is the sales and use tax chapter, so whether a job counts as new construction is settled by a tax definition rather than by what the site looks like (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(8)).

This is the exemption that sits next to the maintenance electrician license and confuses people. If you fit the exemption you do not need the license. Whether you want it anyway is a different question, and it turns on whether you might ever want to work somewhere the exemption does not cover.

The industrial exemption

Subdivision (14) has two branches and they do not reach the same places. Branch (A) covers electrical work at a business that operates a chemical plant, petrochemical plant, refinery, natural gas plant, natural gas treating plant, pipeline, or oil and gas exploration and production operation, performed by a person who works solely for and is employed by that business.

Branch (B) covers a person who performs electrical work for the plant under a contract of at least twelve months’ duration, and its list of places is shorter. Pipelines and oil and gas exploration and production operations are not in it. A long-term contract worker on a pipeline therefore falls outside branch (B), while a direct employee at the same pipeline falls inside branch (A).

Branch (B) then attaches two conditions joined by the word or, not the word and. Either the work is not performed during new construction as the Chapter 151 Tax Code rules define it, or the person is not working for a contractor whose principal place of business is in another state, a United States territory or a foreign country. Reading those two as cumulative is the common mistake, and it makes the branch look far narrower than it is.

The facility list in branch (A) is also the list that defines the journeyman industrial electrician. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002 describes that licensee as an individual who engages in electrical work exclusively at a business operating one of those same plants, pipelines or production operations, so the license and the exemption are drawn around the same ground.

The rest, in short

The other twenty cover, in outline: ships, aircraft and vehicles; underground mine equipment; railway power and signaling; telecommunications provider equipment; utility and cooperative equipment; electrical equipment manufacturing; gas utility equipment; governmental thoroughfare lighting and traffic signals; heating and cooling connections made by a licensee under a different chapter; certain limited-energy, fire alarm and communications circuits; landscape irrigation and low-voltage exterior lighting; elevators and escalators; cable operator facilities; on-site sewage disposal; agricultural use; water well pumps; manufactured and modular housing; a plumber working on existing circuits only; appliance maintenance by a dealer or manufacturer; and pool-related work by a municipal employee on a municipal pool.

If your situation is close to one of these, read the actual subdivision. They are written narrowly on purpose.

Four limits that sit in the same section

They do not exempt an employee of a political subdivision. Subsection (d) says a school district or municipality does not need a contractor license to employ someone for its own electrical work. Subsection (e) then says plainly that this does not exempt the employee from holding the appropriate license.

And they do not shrink the reach of the act on premises wiring. Subsection (b) states that the chapter applies to all premises wiring that originates where an electric utility’s facilities end and a nonutility customer’s electric facilities begin, except as permitted by section 161.123(2)(A) of the Utilities Code. That exception is part of the sentence and we previously left it out.

Subsection (c) does the same job to the utility exemption. The chapter applies to an installation in a building a utility uses for a purpose other than one listed in the section, and it names an office building, a warehouse, a garage, a machine shop, and a recreational building that is not an integral part of a generating plant, substation or control center. What the building is used for decides it, not who owns it.

Subsection (f) attaches a condition to the plumber exemption at subdivision (21). Any installation or replacement of a plumbing fixture or appliance has to meet the requirements of the existing electrical circuits (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(f)). That sentence is what the phrase existing circuits only rests on, and it is why a plumber who has to alter the circuit has left the exemption behind.

What this page cites

• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003 Exemptions. Twenty-three subdivisions in subsection (a), plus the limits in (b), (c), (d), (e) and (f). source
• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002 Definitions. The journeyman industrial electrician is defined by the same facility list that branch (A) of the industrial exemption uses. source
• 16 TAC 73.30 The rule-side exemption provision. It states only that the chapter does not apply to electrical work as provided in Occupations Code 1305.003, so it adds no exemption of its own.
• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.151 The license requirement the exemptions are exceptions to.