Austin Councilmember, Public Interest Law Firm Applaud Austin’s New Microbusiness Resolution

AUSTIN, Texas—Last night, the Austin City Council passed a resolution to support microbusinesses in the city. Councilmember Vanessa Fuentes, one of the resolution’s sponsors, and the Institute for Justice’s Cities Work team, which supported the resolution, are lauding its passage.  

“A small bookstore with four employees shouldn’t have to navigate the same regulatory maze as a tech company with four hundred,” said Councilmember Fuentes. “This resolution begins to change that by reducing barriers and ensuring Austin’s smallest businesses aren’t priced out before ever opening their doors.” 

A 2025 Cities Work report showed that among 20 cities studied, Austin had one of the most burdensome processes for starting a small business, with high fees and onerous steps. One business owner, quoted in the Cities Work report, even said navigating all these steps “takes years off your life. You try to tackle one thing at a time. You get through one hurdle and try to find what the next one is.”   

According to the report, opening a fully compliant restaurant in Austin requires navigating 105 unique regulatory steps and can cost nearly $9,000 in permitting and licensing fees alone before an entrepreneur ever earns a dollar of revenue. That’s more than double the cost compared to Fort Worth and San Antonio, according to other research from Cities Work.  

The new resolution creates a category for microbusinesses, defined as businesses with fewer than 20 employees, and creates a pathway for fee waivers for businesses that qualify. 

“This is another step toward unleashing Austin’s entrepreneurial spirit and making it cheaper, faster, and simpler to start a small business in the city,” said Institute for Justice City Policy Coordinator Ava Mouton-Johnston. “What we heard from many small business owners and aspiring small business owners was that the fees for starting a business were crippling. These reforms will offer relief for Austin’s smallest businesses, which make the city such a vibrant place to live in. This is a first but meaningful step in reducing regulatory barriers in Austin.” 

Cities Work is an initiative of the nonprofit Institute for Justice, which partners with city leaders across the country to make it cheaper, faster, and simpler to start businesses by identifying and rectifying regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship—all at no cost to cities.