Four states will not tell you what the licence costs. We say so, in red

A licence is mandatory in Arizona, Montana, Nevada and Utah. The fee is not on any page we could read: Arizona returned 403, Nevada sets it by the Director each year, Montana and Utah simply do not print it. Our guides say <i>Not verified</i> rather than a plausible number, and this is why.

What we could and could not read

In Arizona the department’s licensing pages answered our requests with a 403, so we could not confirm the fee at all. In Nevada the statute lets the Director set the licence amount each year and the pages we read do not print the current one. In Montana and Utah the licence is clearly required and the fee simply is not on the pages read. Four mandatory licences, zero published prices.

What we do instead of guessing

Each of those four guides shows the licence line as Not verified, in red, with the reason next to it. The per-ton fees, minimums and report dates for the same states are verified and shown in full: Arizona 20 cents a ton with a $2 quarterly minimum, Montana 25 cents with fees payable only above $5 a period, Nevada 30 cents with a $5 quarterly minimum, Utah 35 cents with a $20 minimum filing fee. The blank is only where the blank is.

Why a plausible number is worse than none

A compliance calendar is only useful if you can trust every figure on it without checking. One invented fee, even a reasonable one, means every other figure needs checking too, and then the calendar has no purpose. So the rule in our library is simple: a number appears only with its official source and its verification date next to it. Where there is no source, there is no number. The method page lists every open discrepancy, and the change log records each correction we make to ourselves.

What this means if you distribute in those states

Budget the per-ton fees, which are verified. For the licence itself, the agency will tell you the amount when you apply, and we would rather you hear it from them than from us. When one of the four publishes the figure, the guide changes and the change log says so, with the link.

Written by the Fertilabel rules desk — the team that maintains the state rule library. We publish under the company name, not personal bylines: what matters is the source under each claim, and every one is linked.

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