How to Start a Nail Salon in Alabama

Who licenses nail salons in Alabama

Nail salons answer to the Alabama Board of Cosmetology and Barbering under Title 34 Chapter 7B of the Code of Alabama and Chapter 250-X of the Administrative Code, the same board and the same statute as the hair and barber trades. The board licenses manicurists and the two combination credentials built on the manicurist license, licenses the premises as a shop, and inspects it before the license issues. Nail work sits inside the board's general scope boundary as well: licensed services are non invasive work on the epidermis, specifically the stratum corneum, and the practice rules at 250-X-3-.02 carry the product bans that matter most at a nail station.

Two of those bans deserve the owner's attention before opening day. Methyl methacrylate, the liquid monomer behind the cheapest acrylic work, is prohibited in licensed practice, and callus razors and styptic pencils are prohibited tools. None of the three requires a judgment call by an inspector; each is a line an inspection can simply check. The Department of Revenue appears later in this guide on its own tracks, because the privilege license system names manicuring in two different sections, one for the shop and one for the self employed technician inside it.

Alabama nail salon at a glance

The manicurist license, step by step

The manicurist license is Alabama's nail credential, set by Section 34-7B-21: be at least 16, complete 10 grades of education, and finish 750 hours of training at a licensed school or 1,200 hours as an apprentice. The apprentice route carries the tightest pacing rules on the board's list: the apprenticeship is capped at two years, and the apprentice works no more than 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week. The apprentice permit costs $75 on the board's fee schedule, and changing an apprentice arrangement costs $25.

Examinations run through PSI, the board's testing contractor. The written examination costs $75 and the practical examination costs $130, charged again on a reexam, and the passing score is at least 70 percent. Rule 250-X-6-.01 gives the candidate 24 months from the original examination application date to pass everything required; the board's May 2026 amendment removed the older graduation based clock, so the deadline runs from the application. The original license costs $50. Renewal costs $100 in the licensee's birth month of odd numbered years, a renewal postmarked after the birth month adds the $54 late charge, and the board publishes no continuing education requirement. Section 34-7B-14 reinstates a license expired four years or less on payment of the lapsed and current renewals plus the late fee; beyond four years the route is proof of the prior license and re-examination.

Two combination credentials widen the nail menu, and both are built by statute rather than by scope interpretation. The manicurist/waxer license under Section 34-7B-23 pairs the manicurist license with 160 additional hours of waxing training, which is the route a nail salon takes into brow and body waxing without hiring an esthetician. The esthetician/manicurist license under Section 34-7B-22 starts from the other side: a licensed esthetician adds 650 hours of nail technology and holds both trades on one credential. A nail salon planning facials alongside pedicures staffs from these combinations or from full cosmetologists, because the manicurist license alone does not reach skin services.

The shop license and the inspection

The salon takes the board's shop license, because Chapter 7B defines a shop as any place where barbering or cosmetology is practiced, and manicuring is cosmetology under the chapter. A new shop license costs $200, and Rule 250-X-3-.01 requires a physical inspection and approval of the premises by board staff, plus proof the location is properly zoned, before the license issues. The statute adds that only a properly licensed person who is not an apprentice or student may operate a shop, so an unlicensed owner opens with a licensee running the floor. Plan the inspection around the practice rules: the MMA, callus razor and styptic pencil bans are exactly the kind of line items a first inspection is positioned to catch.

Display and premises rules follow the salon pattern: the shop license hangs at reception, personal licenses hang at the workstations, and the most recent inspection report is posted by the shop license. A shop in a residence needs a permanent finished partition rising to the ceiling between the shop and the living quarters, a separate shop entrance and its own toilet facility, and no shop may double as living, dining or sleeping quarters. Services stay inside licensed premises apart from the narrow exception for a client whose illness or incapacitation prevents travel, served by a licensee employed by a licensed shop on an appointment made through the shop. Shop licenses expire September 30 and renew by October 31 of odd numbered years at $150; relocation costs $50, and a name or owner change costs $25, or a single $25 when both are filed together. Mobile salons have been licensable since January 1, 2022 under Section 34-7B-30, under their own rules chapter.

Forming your business entity

Most Alabama nail salons form as a limited liability company, and Alabama requires a step before the formation filing that most states skip. The Secretary of State requires a Certificate of Name Reservation before formation documents are filed, under Section 10A-1-4.02(f): the name must contain Limited Liability Company or the abbreviation LLC, the reservation fee on the Secretary of State's fee schedule is $25, or $28 requested online, and the Certificate of Formation then files at $200, as the original and one copy. A foreign LLC registering from another state pays $150 with the same name reservation first.

The Alabama LLC files no annual report with the Secretary of State. Its recurring obligation is the Business Privilege Tax at the Department of Revenue, levied under Section 40-14A-22 on the privilege of being organized under Alabama law or doing business in the state and computed on net worth. The initial return, Form BPT-IN, is due within two and a half months after the entity organizes, with no extension of time to file it, and annual returns on Form PPT follow the federal calendar, with an automatic six month extension to file that does not extend the time to pay. Under Act 2022-252, an entity whose calculated tax is $100 or less is exempt from filing the return for tax years beginning after December 31, 2023, which covers most single location nail salons. If a lender or landlord asks for a Certificate of Compliance, the department issues one for $13.30 requested online, and it may ask for an exemption affidavit first.

Business names and the trade name registry

Alabama has no DBA filing. No statute requires a sole proprietor or an LLC trading under a different name to file an assumed name certificate with the Secretary of State or any county office, and older advice about a probate court fictitious name form does not describe a filing Alabama law creates. Your salon's trading name is carried by the shop license application, the county privilege license, your tax accounts and your lease, and those records should all tell the same story.

What the state runs instead is a marks registry. The Secretary of State's Trademarks Division administers trademark, service mark and trade name registrations under the Title 8 Chapter 12 system, in place since 1988. A trade name registration costs $30 with an application and three specimens showing the name in use, runs five years, and renews for another $30 with one specimen. It is a brand record that identifies the business to the state, useful against a copycat salon across town, and it is not a license or a permission to operate. It also covers only a name already in use, because the specimens are the proof.

Federal tax ID and business banking

Apply for an Employer Identification Number on IRS.gov. It is free, it issues online in one session, and any site charging you for an EIN is selling you a form you can file yourself. Alabama keys its registrations to the federal number: the Department of Revenue opens your sales tax and Business Privilege Tax accounts against it, the Department of Labor builds your unemployment account on it, and the county probate office records it on the privilege license.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every fee, product order, rent payment and tax deposit through it. The birth month license renewals, the October shop and privilege license deadlines, the quarterly unemployment reports and the annual privilege tax return all assume the salon can show its own books, and a clean, separate account is the cheapest compliance tool in this guide.

Sales tax through the Department of Revenue

Alabama's sales tax falls on retail sales of tangible personal property and a list of specifically taxed categories, and manicuring and pedicuring are not among them. A manicure, pedicure or set of enhancements is not a taxable sale in Alabama, so you collect no sales tax on the service ticket. The statewide general rate is 4 percent, and county and city taxes ride on top of taxable sales at rates that vary by address, so this guide prints the state rate and sends you to the Department of Revenue's rate lookup for the combined figure at your door.

The retail shelf is the taxable side of the salon. Polish, treatment products and other take home goods you sell are retail sales at the 4 percent state rate plus the local taxes at your address, and selling them means registering for a sales tax account through My Alabama Taxes before the first taxable sale. Buy resale inventory without paying tax under that account, and expect the mirror rule on your own purchases: the acrylics, gels and supplies you consume at the station, and the pedicure chairs themselves, are taxable purchases, because nothing about them is resold. Keep services and products on separate lines at the register so the tax lands only where the statute puts it.

Station rent in an Alabama nail salon

Alabama creates no booth or station renter license. Chapter 7B and the board's rules never address station rental, so a nail technician renting a station in your salon needs one board credential, their own manicurist or combination license, and works inside your shop license, your premises and your inspection record. Your compliance file should carry every renter's license number and birth month renewal date, because your inspection covers the stations your renters work from, including the product bans that apply to whatever is on their tables.

The renter's own annual filing is a tax license, and for this trade the statute names it directly. Section 40-12-124 charges each person engaging in the business of manicuring a license tax of $7.50 plus the $1 issuance fee, and the Department of Revenue's handbook reads the section as applying to self employed persons operating within a shop licensed under Section 40-12-61, which is the nail station arrangement exactly. The employee comparison sits in the same handbook: a manicurist employed in a beauty shop is covered by the shop's Section 61 license and does not buy the Section 124 license. That $8.50 line is Alabama's classification test made visible, and it runs on control rather than labels: a renter who sets prices, books clients and pays a set rent reads as the self employed operator Section 124 describes, and the paperwork should match. A technician who wants a room and a business of their own is opening a shop, and the salon suite guide in this cluster covers that license.

Hiring employees in Alabama

Your first hire registers the salon as an Alabama employer on two tracks. The Department of Revenue takes the withholding registration through My Alabama Taxes, and the Department of Labor, through Workforce Alabama, takes the unemployment insurance registration. Newly liable employers pay unemployment tax at 2.70 percent on the first $8,000 of each employee's wages, and later rates are experience rated on the salon's own claims history, so the first year rate is a starting point rather than a fixture.

Alabama sets no state minimum wage at all. The United States Department of Labor's state wage table records Alabama as having no state minimum wage law, so employers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act pay the federal floor: $7.25 an hour, with the federal tipped cash wage of $2.13 an hour where tips bring the total to $7.25. Percentage and commission pay for nail technicians still has to clear that federal floor across the pay period, which is the calculation that matters in a salon mixing employees and renters. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same first hire checklist: confirm your duties with the Department of Labor and place coverage with a carrier before the first employee's first shift, and keep the certificate with the licenses it sits beside.

Local rules for an Alabama nail salon

The local layer is the state and county privilege license, bought at the county probate judge or county revenue office where the salon sits, with the county levy collected at 50 percent of the state amount under Section 40-12-2(e) and a $1 issuance fee on top. A nail salon pays as a beauty parlor under Section 40-12-61, whose text covers any place where hairdressing, facial treatments, manicuring or hair waving is done: $15 for the shop owner, plus $9 for each additional operator in a city over 60,000 people or $6 per operator elsewhere. The Department of Revenue's handbook adds that the section is needed even when the business operates from a home, and that a manicurist employed in the shop is counted under the shop's Section 61 license. The license renews every year by October 31, and missing the date adds a 15 percent penalty plus interest.

A municipal business license, where your city levies one, is separate and additional, at a price the city sets. Zoning sits underneath both licenses: the board requires proof the shop location is properly zoned as part of the shop license itself, so get the zoning answer in writing before the lease is signed. A salon that moves restarts three clocks at once, the board's $50 relocation, a new privilege license for the new place of business, and the city license for the new address.

Insurance for an Alabama nail salon

Chapter 7B does not condition the shop license on an insurance filing, so a nail salon's insurance stack is set by risk and by contract rather than by the board. Professional liability is the core policy for a room built on chemical products, drills and soaking tubs, and it is the coverage a station rent structure has to think hardest about, because the salon's policy, the renter's own policy and the shop's inspection record describe overlapping people working in the same room.

General liability for the premises and property coverage for pedicure chairs, equipment and the retail stock complete the standard stack. Landlords routinely name their own limits and additional insured requirements in the lease, and those contract numbers, not a statute, are the figures to satisfy. Keep the certificates filed with the licenses they sit beside, so an inspector, a landlord or a new manager can see the whole compliance picture in one folder.

Your Alabama renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board of Cosmetology and Barbering: license types, training hours and routes
• Board of Cosmetology and Barbering: the fee schedule, exams, licenses and shops
• Board of Cosmetology and Barbering: Title 34 Chapter 7B and Chapter 250-X rules, including the MMA ban at Rule 250-X-3-.02
• Secretary of State: LLC formation, name reservation and filing fees
• Secretary of State: trade name registration through the Trademarks Division
• Department of Revenue: Business Privilege Tax forms, deadlines and the $100 exemption
• Department of Revenue: Handbook of Privilege and Store Licenses, Sections 40-12-61 and 40-12-124
• Department of Revenue: state sales and use tax rates
• Workforce Alabama: employer unemployment tax basics
• United States Department of Labor: state minimum wage laws, Alabama entry

Alabama nail salon FAQ