How to Start a Barbershop in Kansas

Who licenses barbershops in Kansas

Barbershops answer to the Kansas Board of Barbering, at 700 SW Jackson, Suite 1002 in Topeka, working under its own act at K.S.A. 65-1800 and following and its own regulations at agency 61. The board licenses barbers, barber instructors, barber shops, barber schools and colleges, and chair lessees, and it writes its own sanitary rules for shops, schools and colleges. It is a fully separate regulator from the Kansas Board of Cosmetology: a barber and a cosmetologist working in the same Kansas building hold licenses from two different boards, under two different statutes, on two different renewal clocks.

The separation has practical consequences an owner feels immediately. Barber licenses renew every year where cosmetology licenses renew every two. Barber fees are fixed in the board's own fee regulation, K.A.R. 61-7-2, and run higher than the cosmetology board's: the barber examination alone is $100. And the crossover is limited: a Kansas cosmetology license does not authorize barbering, and a barber license does not authorize the chemical and skin services inside the cosmetology scope, so a shop offering both trades staffs and licenses both, and holds premises licenses from both boards where both are practiced.

Kansas barbershop at a glance

The barber license, step by step

Kansas sets the barber course as a range rather than a single number. K.S.A. 65-1810 provides that no barber school or college may be approved unless its graduation requirement is a course of not less than 1,200 hours and not more than 1,500 hours, as prescribed in the board's rules, attended at not more than 8 hours per working day. A student works under a student learning license, $55 on the board's fee schedule. On graduation the applicant sits for the board's barber examination, $100 under K.A.R. 61-7-2, and pays $80 for issuance of the license to practice barbering. The instructor route sits on top of the barber license: the instructor's examination is given in two parts, with a grade of not less than 75 percent required on each part, and the instructor fees are the schedule's bargain, $40 for the examination, $40 for issuance and $40 at renewal.

Renewal is where Kansas barbering shows its character. K.S.A. 65-1819 requires every licensed barber, instructor, operator of a barber shop and operator of a barber school or college to renew the license annually and pay the required fee, and K.A.R. 61-4-2 spreads those renewals across the year alphabetically: licensees whose last names begin A, B, C, M, N or O renew on or before March 31; D, E, F, P, Q or R by June 30; G, H, I, S, T or U by September 30; and J, K, L, V, W, X, Y or Z by December 31, with barber schools renewing by December 31 regardless. The barber renewal itself is $80. There is no grace built into the system, only a restoration scale: an expired barber license costs $100 to restore inside 30 days, $160 inside a year, $240 inside two years and $320 inside three, and a license expired three years or more comes back only through reexamination, on payment of the examination and issuance fees totaling $180.

Note what the barber act does not do: it does not borrow the cosmetology act's renewal examination, and it does not set continuing education for barbers in the materials read for this guide. The discipline is frequency instead. A Kansas barber touches the board every single year, on a deadline set by their own surname, and the shop's licenses stack on the same calendar.

The barber shop license

The shop is licensed separately from the barbers in it. The board's Barber Shop Application covers a new shop, a change of ownership and a change of location, each at the $80 fee in K.A.R. 61-7-2, and the board's own FAQ describes the inspection that follows in terms that suit a small agency: pictures of the shop are emailed to the board office at [email protected] for a virtual inspection, which allows the license to be made. There is no separate inspection fee at opening; the $80 covers the new shop event, and the recurring charge is the schedule's shop inspection and annual license fee of $40 a year.

The shop license then lives on the same annual, alphabetical rhythm as the people in it, and its late discipline mirrors theirs at shop scale: restoring an expired shop license costs $55 inside 30 days, $120 inside a year, $160 inside two years and $200 inside three. The board's sanitary rules govern the premises day to day, covering sanitation in shops, schools and colleges, and they bar putting the shop to residential use: the regulations include a rule prohibiting use of a shop for living quarters or other business purposes. A change of ownership or a move is not an amendment; each is a new shop event at the $80 fee, so a buyer of an existing Kansas barbershop budgets for their own shop license from the first day rather than expecting the seller's to transfer.

Forming your business entity

Most Kansas barbershops form as a limited liability company with the Secretary of State. The Articles of Organization fee schedule on Form DL prices the filing at $85 filed online and $90 on paper. The name must contain one of the words of formation the statute lists, LLC, L.L.C., LC, L.C., Limited Liability Company or Limited Company, and the filing requires a resident agent with a Kansas registered office street address, which may not be a post office box. Kansas charges no franchise tax to keep the entity alive: the Department of Revenue states that there is no Kansas franchise tax for tax year 2011 and after.

The recurring obligation is the information report, filed every two years rather than every year, at $90 online or $110 on paper on Form ILC. The filing year follows the formation year: a business formed in an even year files in even years, an odd year business in odd years, with for-profit reports due April 15 of the filing year. A three month delinquency window follows, during which other filings are limited; once it passes, the business forfeits and cannot file anything with the Secretary of State until the past due reports are submitted and it is reinstated. A sole proprietor skips the articles and the report entirely, at the price of holding the business's liabilities personally, which is why many single chair owners start there and form the LLC when the second chair or the first employee arrives.

Business names: Kansas has no DBA filing

Kansas has no trade name filing to describe, because the filing does not exist. There is no Kansas statute requiring or providing an assumed name, fictitious name or DBA registration, with the Secretary of State or with any county, and the Secretary of State's own Articles of Organization form instructs filers not to include DBA, fictitious, assumed or trade names in the LLC's name field. A Kansas barbershop may trade under a name different from its legal name without filing anything for the name itself.

That freedom shifts the work rather than removing it. The registered entity name, filed with the Secretary of State at formation, is the legal name on the shop license application, the tax accounts and the bank account. A brand name worth protecting is protected the way Kansas law provides, through use and, where the name qualifies, a Kansas trademark or service mark registration with the Secretary of State. Check the city's business licensing office as well: a local license may ask what name the business trades under even though the state does not register it.

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 for an EIN is selling a form you can file yourself. The EIN is the key that opens the registrations that follow: the Department of Revenue's sales tax and withholding accounts, the Department of Labor's unemployment insurance account when you hire, and the business bank account all key off the federal number paired with the Secretary of State's entity records.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every fee, product order, rent payment and payroll deposit through it. A Kansas barbershop's compliance calendar has its own texture, four alphabetical renewal deadlines across the year, the shop's annual license, a sales tax schedule assigned by the Department of Revenue and an information report every other April 15, and clean separate books are what make it survivable. The account also draws the line that matters if a chair lessee's classification is ever questioned: the shop's money and the lessees' money should never share a ledger.

Sales tax in Kansas: services are not taxed, retail is

Kansas writes its sales tax as a list, and the list is the whole analysis. K.S.A. 79-3603 imposes the 6.5 percent state rate on enumerated categories: retail sales of tangible personal property, telecommunications, utilities, meals, admissions, hotel rooms, rentals of tangible property, dry cleaning and laundry, vehicle washing, installing or applying tangible personal property, repairing or servicing tangible personal property, and a short run of similar named lines. Barbering is not on the list. A haircut, a shave and a beard trim carry no sales tax, because the tax was never written to reach a service the statute does not name, and the Department of Revenue's own publications frame the tax the same way, as retail sales, admissions and specifically enumerated services.

The register still needs the tax, because the counter sells things. Pomade, clays, oils, tonics and take-home products are retail sales of tangible personal property, taxable at the 6.5 percent state rate, with the city and county local rates for the shop's address applied on top. Register the business with the Department of Revenue through the KDOR Customer Service Center, or on the Business Tax Application, Form CR-16, before the first retail sale: the department assigns a sales tax account number and issues the Retailers' Sales Tax Registration Certificate, and Kansas law requires returns to be filed electronically. Set the point of sale to itemize services and products on separate lines from day one.

Chair leases and worker classification

Barbering is the one Kansas trade where the rental itself is licensed: a barber who rents a station inside another owner's shop works under a chair lease, and holds a chair lease license in their own name. K.A.R. 61-4-2 places chair lessees in the same annual renewal schedule as barbers, shop owners and instructors, sorted alphabetically by last name, so the lessee's license renews on the lessee's own surname deadline, not the shop's. One caution on price: the board's fee regulation, K.A.R. 61-7-2, does not list a chair lease fee among its charges, so confirm the current amount with the board office when applying rather than relying on figures in older guides. Kansas cosmetology, by contrast, has no booth or chair license of any kind, which makes barbering's chair lease a genuine Kansas peculiarity.

The chair lease license settles the premises question, not the worker classification question. Holding a chair lease license does not by itself make the barber an independent contractor for tax purposes, and the arrangement is still read by control. A lessee who sets their own prices, hours and client list, collects their own money and carries their own tools and products reads as an independent business renting a station. A barber whose schedule, prices, products and clients the shop controls reads as an employee whatever the lease calls them, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading. Put the lease in writing, keep the shop license current for the premises, and keep each licensed person's renewal on the calendar under their own name.

Hiring employees in Kansas

The first hire registers the shop as a Kansas employer on two tracks. For unemployment insurance, the Kansas Department of Labor's Employer Handbook directs every employing unit that begins business in Kansas to file a Status Report, Form K-CNS 010, within 15 days of paying its first employee. Liability is established when the shop has an employee working any portion of a day in 20 different weeks in a calendar year, or pays $1,500 or more in gross wages in a calendar quarter. A new employer is assigned a contribution rate of 1.75 percent, 5.55 percent for construction employers, applied to the taxable wage base, which for 2026 is the first $15,100 of wages per employee, and moves to a computed experience rate after three years. Reports run quarterly on Form K-CNS 100, due the last day of the month following each quarter, and new hires are reported to the Kansas New Hire Directory. For income tax, the shop registers with the Department of Revenue to withhold Kansas tax from wages.

The wage floor is $7.25 an hour. The Department of Labor's handbook states the Kansas minimum wage at $7.25, the same figure as the federal floor, and notes that employees not covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act must still be paid the Kansas rate. Federal overtime at one and one half times the regular rate applies past 40 hours in a workweek. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same first hire checklist, arranged before the first employee's first shift, and a shop with 25 or more employees should note that Kansas requires its wage reports to be filed electronically.

Local rules for a Kansas barbershop

The state licenses do not finish the opening. A shop opening inside a city such as Wichita, Overland Park, Kansas City, Topeka or Lawrence should expect a city business license and local building and fire code compliance on top of the state stack, at fees and on forms the city itself sets, and the parcel's zoning has to allow a barbershop before any of the licensing matters: the shop license is made for the address in the application, and none of the board's paperwork answers whether a shop may operate at that address at all. Make the zoning call before the lease is signed, because the board's inspection and the local use approval come from separate governments, and a shop needs both.

Barbering adds one premises rule of its own to the local layer. The Board of Barbering's sanitary regulations govern the shop's sanitation and operation, and among them is a rule against putting the premises to other uses: a barber shop may not double as living quarters or as space for an unrelated business. Owners converting a mixed use building, or taking space inside a building shared with other trades, should read the shop's layout against those sanitary rules before the application photographs are taken, since the board's virtual inspection reviews the shop as it actually is.

Insurance for a Kansas barbershop

Nothing in the barbering act or the board's regulations, as read for this guide, conditions the shop license or any barber license on an insurance filing, so the insurance stack is set by risk and by contract rather than by the board. Professional liability is the core policy for a business built on razors, clippers and chemical services, and the chair lease structure has to think hardest about it: the shop's policy, each lessee's own policy and the lease describe overlapping people in the same room, while responsibility for the room itself sits with the shop license holder.

General liability for the premises and property coverage for chairs, stations, build out and retail stock complete the standard stack. Landlords routinely write their own limits and additional insured requirements into the lease, and those contract numbers are the figures to satisfy. Kansas names no required limit for a barbershop in the barbering rules, so treat any figure quoted as a state requirement as a sales line.

Your Kansas renewal calendar

Official sources

• Kansas Board of Barbering: barber, instructor, shop, school and chair lease licenses, forms and renewals
• Board of Barbering FAQs: opening a new shop, the $80 application and the virtual inspection
• K.A.R. 61-4-2: annual renewal of barber, shop owner, chair lessee and instructor licenses on the alphabetical schedule
• K.S.A. 65-1819: annual renewal of barber licenses and restoration of expired licenses
• Secretary of State: Articles of Organization and information reports, with the form fee schedules
• Department of Revenue: sales tax registration, Publication KS-1510 and withholding
• K.S.A. 79-3603: the retailers' sales tax and the categories it reaches
• Department of Labor: the Unemployment Insurance Employer Handbook, Form K-CNS 010 registration and contribution rates

Kansas barbershop FAQ