Home / Georgia / Salon Suite

How to Start a Salon Suite Business in Georgia: Licenses, Costs & Requirements

Every suite operator asks Georgia for a suite license, and Georgia does not sell one. The state licenses facilities through the Salon/Shop license and practitioners through the cosmetology board, and a suite business is legal when it fits itself honestly into that framework. This guide works through the two operating models, the facility rules a suite must meet, and the filings that follow from each.

Researched from Georgia state sources. Our guides are free. We may earn a commission when you use a partner service, at no additional cost to you.

Who licenses salon suites in Georgia

Georgia has no salon suite license, no suite category in its cosmetology law, and no separate application for suite buildings. What it has is a facility license: the Salon/Shop license issued by the Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers, administered by the Professional Licensing Boards Division of the Secretary of State, for a premises where cosmetology or barbering services are practiced. A suite business is licensed, or not, by fitting itself into that facility framework, and the fit depends on which of two businesses you are actually running: landlord to independent salon businesses, or salon operator renting chairs and rooms inside your own licensed salon.

That distinction is the whole guide. The board licenses facilities and practitioners, and its rules in Chapter 240-4 speak in terms of facilities, permanent locations, and posted licenses, not suites. Read the suite question through those rules and most of the confusion clears: whoever operates a salon business at an address needs that address licensed, and every practitioner needs their own license current and posted. The board publishes no suite specific rule, so where your model is genuinely unusual, get the board's answer in writing before you build.

Georgia salon suite requirements at a glance

Two suite models, two licensing answers

Model one: you are the landlord. You lease private suites to independent beauty businesses and provide no services yourself. In that model each suite is its own salon business operating at its own permanent location, and each operator needs their own Salon/Shop license for their suite, $75 to apply and $75 to renew by June 30 of odd years, alongside their practitioner license. Your leases should say so plainly and require proof of both licenses before a renter takes a client, because an unlicensed suite inside your building becomes your problem with the board, the city, and your insurer at the same time. The building itself, as a landlord operation, answers to zoning, building and fire codes, and your local occupational tax certificate rather than to the cosmetology board.

Model two: you are the operator. You hold the Salon/Shop license for the whole premises and rent booths or rooms to practitioners who work under your establishment. Then the facility license is yours, one license for the address, and renters practice under it the way booth renters do in any Georgia salon. The trade is control and responsibility: the board holds the licensee of record answerable for sanitation, postings, and who works in the space, so an operator model needs house rules with teeth, not just a rent roll.

Hybrid buildings exist, a licensed salon on one side and independently licensed suites on the other, and they work when the licensing matches the floor plan: each independently operated business licensed for its own space, with its own posted license. What does not work is the unlicensed middle, suites marketed as independent businesses while everyone assumes someone else's license covers them.

The facility rules every suite has to meet

Chapter 240-4 of the board's rules sets the physical standard each licensed space must meet. A salon or shop must have a permanent and definite location. Its space must be separated by tight, floor to ceiling walls from residential and other commercial space, which is precisely the construction a suite already provides and one reason suites fit Georgia's framework well. The space may not be used for sleeping, dining, or other domestic purposes, and it cannot connect to living space by a doorway. Toilet and lavatory facilities must be on the premises or in the same building within 300 feet, a rule written for exactly the shared corridor layout suites use.

Postings and inspections follow the license. The facility license must be posted within fifteen feet of the facility entrance, and each practitioner's current license must be posted in an open, public area. In a suite building that means the license lives in the suite where the services happen, where a client and an inspector can see it, not in a leasing office down the hall. Any board member or inspector may enter and inspect a licensed facility during regular business hours, and refusal risks sanctions up to revocation, so leases should give management a way to admit inspectors and should oblige renters to keep their suites inspection ready.

Licenses for the professionals inside the suites

Suites change the business structure, never the practitioner licensing. Every professional working in a suite holds the license their services require from the board: master cosmetologist at 1,500 credit hours, hair designer at 1,325, master barber at 1,500, barber II at 1,140, esthetician at 1,000, or nail technician at 525, each with its own renewal date and fee. Lash artists license as estheticians or master cosmetologists, because Georgia has no lash license. Braiders who only braid need no practitioner license at all, under the statutory exemption in Section 43-10-1, and massage therapists license with the Georgia Board of Massage Therapy instead.

As the operator, your practical job is verification. Check every renter's license in the Secretary of State's online lookup before they sign, again before they open, and on a calendar after that, because a renter whose license lapses in your building is practicing unlicensed in a space associated with your business. Keep copies in the lease file, require renters to post the current license inside their suite, and treat a lapse the way your lease should: services stop until the license is active again.

Forming your LLC with the Georgia Secretary of State

Most Georgia beauty businesses organize as a limited liability company, and Georgia makes the filing simple. To form the LLC, file Articles of Organization with the Corporations Division of the Secretary of State, online through the eCorp system. Under the Corporations Division fee schedule effective September 6, 2025, the filing fee is $100 plus a $10 service charge, $110 in total, and the same $110 applies whether you file online or on paper. Older guides still quote $100 or $105; the September 2025 schedule replaced both numbers. Your Articles name the LLC, give its address, and name a registered agent with a Georgia street address who accepts legal papers on the business's behalf.

The filing owners miss is the annual registration. Every Georgia LLC files one with the Secretary of State each year between January 1 and April 1, starting the year after formation. The statutory fee is $50 plus the $10 service charge, $60 in total, and filing after April 1 adds a $25 late penalty. Let it lapse and the Secretary of State can administratively dissolve the LLC, which strips away the liability protection the entity exists to provide. Put the January to April window on your calendar the day you form, not the first spring it surprises you.

An LLC is not the only route. A sole proprietor files nothing with the Corporations Division, but also gets no separation between business and personal debts and claims. A corporation files Articles of Incorporation at the same $110 total and owes the same $60 annual registration. Whatever you choose, the entity does not change the licensing in this guide. The board licenses, the county trade name filing, and the tax accounts below are the same for an LLC, a corporation, and a sole proprietor.

Registering your trade name with the Clerk of Superior Court

Georgia handles business names at the county courthouse, not at the state level. If you do business under a name that does not disclose who owns the business, a storefront name, a brand, or an LLC trading under a shorter name, O.C.G.A. Section 10-1-490 requires you to register that trade name with the Clerk of Superior Court in the county where the business is chiefly carried on. File before you start doing business under the name. The registration statement is verified by affidavit and lists the names and addresses of the owners and the nature of the business being carried on.

Two steps catch people out. First, the filing is not complete until you publish notice of it in the newspaper in which the sheriff's advertisements are printed, once a week for two weeks. Second, there is no statewide fee: the charge is the clerk's fee prescribed by O.C.G.A. Section 15-6-77, so it is set county by county. Wayne County, as one published example, charges $163 to register a trade name. Ask your own clerk for the current schedule before you go in. You file once; a new and amended statement is required only when ownership changes.

A trade name registration does not create your entity and does not give you trademark rights in the name. It is a public disclosure filing, and your bank will usually ask for the filed statement when you open the business account, so complete it before you sign a lease or print signage under the name.

Getting your federal Employer Identification Number

Your Employer Identification Number, or EIN, is the federal tax ID for the business, issued by the IRS. Apply directly on the IRS website and it is free; any site charging you for an EIN is selling you a form you can file yourself in minutes. You need the number before your first hire, and in practice sooner: most banks require one to open a business account for an LLC, and the Department of Revenue and the Department of Labor both want it when you register your tax accounts. Apply right after your entity filing so it never becomes the bottleneck.

Georgia sales tax: services are not taxed, retail products are

Georgia taxes the retail sale of tangible personal property, and the Department of Revenue states the rule plainly: the tax falls on retail sales of goods and a short list of specific services, and most services are exempt. Hair, skin, nail, and lash services performed in the suites are services, and they are not on that taxable list, so service tickets carry no sales tax. Rent you collect is not a retail sale either. The tax lives at your retail shelf: shampoo, conditioner, styling products, and anything else a client pays for and takes home are taxable retail sales.

Register with the Department of Revenue before your first retail sale. Registration runs through the Georgia Tax Center, the Department's online portal, which issues your sales and use tax number and your Certificate of Registration as a dealer. The state rate is 4 percent, and county and city taxes stack on top of it, so the rate you charge is the combined rate for your location from the Department's published rate chart. Inside Atlanta, in Fulton County, that combined rate is 8.9 percent. Charging another county's rate is a common and expensive mistake, because the combined rate follows the place of the sale.

One more rule matters to service businesses. On the products you use up while providing services, the back bar and treatment products each suite business consumes in its own space, you are the end user, and sales or use tax is due on those purchases. Buy your retail inventory under your dealer registration and collect the tax when you sell it; pay the tax on what the business consumes itself. Keep services and products on separate lines in your point of sale, file your returns on the schedule the Department assigns, and remit what you collected. That money was never yours.

Renters are not staff: classification and your lease

A suite business lives or dies on the line between renter and employee. Georgia has no salon specific statute that blesses booth or suite rental, so classification turns on how the relationship actually works. A renter who runs their own business, their own license, prices, hours, booking, and client payments, and who pays you a flat rent for the space, is an independent business leasing from you. A renter whose schedule you set, whose prices you publish, whose clients you assign, and who hands you a percentage of each ticket starts to look like an employee, and the Department of Labor and the IRS classify on the reality, not the lease label.

Your lease is where the line gets drawn in advance. It should identify each renter as the operator of their own business, require their practitioner and Salon/Shop licenses where their model needs them, require their own liability insurance, set flat rent rather than a commission on services, and leave booking, pricing, and client relationships with the renter. The operator's own obligations stay the employer's obligations only for actual staff: a leasing manager or cleaner you hire goes on payroll with a Department of Labor unemployment account, a 2.70 percent starting rate on the first $9,500 of wages, new hire reporting within 10 days, and workers' compensation once you regularly employ three or more people.

Keep the money flows as clean as the paperwork. Renters should collect their own service income and pay their own taxes, including sales tax on any retail products they sell. The more the building's systems quietly run their businesses for them, the more the arrangement reads as one salon with employees, which is a fine model when it is licensed and staffed as one, and a problem when it is only dressed as rentals.

The local layer: occupational tax certificates, zoning and Atlanta

Georgia issues no general state business license. The license that lets you operate day to day is local: an occupational tax certificate, called a business license or a business tax certificate in many jurisdictions, issued by your city when the business sits inside city limits or by your county when it does not. Fees and formulas are set locally, commonly from some mix of business type, employee count, and gross receipts, and renewal dates are local too. Zoning has to allow a personal services business at your address before you sign the lease, and buildout work can need building, plumbing, and electrical permits plus a certificate of occupancy. Do the local checks in that order: zoning for the address, the certificate, then buildout permits.

Metro Atlanta stacks the layers highest. A business inside Atlanta needs the city's business license on top of the county process, and the metro area is split across Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties, so the county of your actual street address controls your county filings and your combined sales tax rate. Two storefronts a few miles apart can answer to different county offices at different rates. Confirm zoning and the certificate for the exact address before you commit to a space.

Insurance and the costs that keep coming back

Plan on three policies at a minimum. General liability covers injuries in the space, like a client slipping on a wet floor. Professional liability covers claims arising from the services themselves: a color reaction in suite four, a slip in the shared corridor, or a wax burn in suite nine. Property coverage protects your equipment, furniture, and retail stock, and business interruption coverage can carry the business if a fire or flood closes you for a month. Workers' compensation, covered above, is legally required once you regularly employ three or more people and is priced separately. In a suite building the insurance structure matters more than in a single salon: your lease and your policy should say whose coverage answers first when a renter's client is hurt in a suite and in the common areas, and every renter should carry their own professional liability policy for their own business.

Premiums vary by city, services, and claims history, so get quotes from brokers who write beauty industry policies and compare the exclusions, not just the price. Then add the recurring state stack to the same budget: practitioner renewals on their staggered dates, the establishment renewal, the $60 LLC annual registration every spring, and your local certificate renewal. None is large on its own. Together they are a real line in the budget, and calendaring them in advance is how owners avoid late renewal fees and reinstatement charges.

Dates to put on your calendar

• June 30, odd years: Salon/Shop license renewals, $75, for your premises license and for each independently licensed suite.
• March 31 and December 31, even years, and August 31 and September 30 on their own cycles: practitioner renewals for the professionals in your suites; verify each renter's date by license type.
• January 1 to April 1, every year: LLC annual registration with the Secretary of State, $60 total.
• April 30, July 31, October 31, January 31: quarterly unemployment tax and wage reports to the Department of Labor, if you employ staff.
• Within 10 days of each hire: new hire report to the Georgia New Hire Reporting Program.
• On the Department of Revenue's schedule: sales and use tax returns for any retail product sales.
• Every year: renew your city or county occupational tax certificate on the local schedule.

Official Georgia sources for this guide

• Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers: applications, renewals, how-to guides and board news
• Board fee schedule (GSBCB Rev 03/22): every board fee and renewal date in this guide
• O.C.G.A. Section 43-10-9: training hours, apprenticeships and examinations for each license
• Board rules, Chapter 240-4: facility requirements, license posting and health and safety rules
• Corporations Division filing fees (effective September 6, 2025): Articles of Organization and annual registration fees
• Department of Revenue, What is Subject to Sales and Use Tax?: the services versus retail split
• Department of Labor, File Tax and Wage Reports: unemployment tax accounts, the $9,500 wage base and quarterly due dates
• State Board of Workers' Compensation, insurance FAQs: the three employee threshold for coverage

This guide is general information researched from official Georgia sources, not legal or tax advice. Requirements, fees and forms change; verify the current rules with the agencies linked above before you file, sign or spend.

Frequently asked questions

Does each salon suite in Georgia need its own Salon/Shop license?

It depends on the model. Georgia licenses facilities, and where each suite is an independently operated salon business at its own permanent location, that business holds its own Salon/Shop license, $75 to apply and $75 to renew by June 30 of odd years. Where one operator holds the license for the whole premises and renters work under it as booth renters, the single facility license covers the address. The board publishes no suite specific rule, so unusual models deserve a written answer from the board.

Do I need a cosmetology license to own a suite building in Georgia?

No. Owning the building and leasing suites is a landlord business, and the board licenses the salon businesses and practitioners inside it, not the landlord. What you cannot do is provide services yourself, or operate a salon under your own name, without the licenses those activities require. Your own obligations run through zoning, building codes, and the local occupational tax certificate.

What facility rules apply to a Georgia salon suite?

The rules in Chapter 240-4 of the board's rules: a permanent and definite location, separation from residential and other commercial space by tight, floor to ceiling walls, no use of the space for sleeping or dining, and toilet and lavatory facilities on the premises or within 300 feet in the same building. The facility license posts within fifteen feet of the entrance, each practitioner's license posts in an open area, and inspectors may enter during business hours.

Are suite renters my employees?

Not if the arrangement is genuinely a rental. Renters who hold their own licenses, set their own prices and hours, book and collect from their own clients, and pay flat rent are independent businesses. Renters whose schedules, prices, and clients you control look like employees to the Department of Labor and the IRS regardless of what the lease calls them. Georgia has no salon specific statute that settles the question, so the reality of the relationship controls.

Who pays sales tax in a suite building?

Rent is not a retail sale, and beauty services are not taxable in Georgia, so neither the operator's rent nor the renters' service tickets carry sales tax. Retail products do: when a renter sells shampoo or home care to a client, that sale is taxed at the 4 percent state rate plus county and city taxes, and the renter collects it under their own Department of Revenue registration.

Can a braider or massage therapist rent a suite in Georgia?

Yes, on their own regulatory tracks. A braider who only braids needs no practitioner license under the exemption in O.C.G.A. Section 43-10-1, and a braiding only business is not operating a board licensed salon. A massage therapist holds a state license from the Georgia Board of Massage Therapy, and the massage business itself is subject to local ordinances rather than a state establishment license. Both still owe the ordinary business filings and their own insurance.