It does, but it's usually the contractor who pulls the permit for you. I suspect enforcement is enough of a deterrent, but who knows. As I understand it, the pe

It does, but it's usually the contractor who pulls the permit for you. I suspect enforcement is enough of a deterrent, but who knows. As I understand it, the penalty is that you get to rip out whatever was built without a permit. For DIY'ers, there's actually a nice program... once you pull a permit, you get to talk with the code inspectors during their office hours, and they will walk you through everything you need to do in order to meet code. A friend of mine built an entire addition this way. There's no way to hack-proof any taxation mechanism.