How to Start a Microblading Business in Kansas
Kansas licenses microblading as what it is: cosmetic tattooing. The Board of Cosmetology's body art program, under K.S.A. 65-1940 and following and the rules at K.A.R. 69-15, issues the cosmetic tattoo artist license next to the tattoo artist and body piercer licenses, and it is earned the body art way, through 600 hours in an approved school or 1,200 hours under an approved trainer, 50 completed procedures either way, plus 8 hours of infection control education beyond the curriculum, and a two part board examination passed at 75 percent. No cosmetology license substitutes for it, and it substitutes for no cosmetology license. The studio carries its own body art establishment license at $50 a year, the practitioner license renews every two years at $50 with continuing education, and around those licenses sits the Kansas business pattern: an LLC at $85 online with an information report every two years, no trade name filing and no franchise tax, and a sales tax that reaches the aftercare on the shelf but never the brow service itself.
Kansas sources last reviewed: November 3, 2026
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Who licenses microblading in Kansas
The regulator is the Kansas Board of Cosmetology, at 2420 NW Button Road in Topeka, but the program is its body art division rather than its cosmetology side. The body art statutes at K.S.A. 65-1940 through 65-1954 and the rules at K.A.R. 69-15 license three practitioner credentials, tattoo artist, cosmetic tattoo artist and body piercer, and microblading falls under the cosmetic tattoo artist license by definition: it is tattooing performed for cosmetic purposes, and Kansas never created a brow specific shortcut around it. The same board that licenses the salon therefore licenses the brow studio, on an entirely separate set of forms, fees and rules.
The separation runs both ways, and it is the first thing a Kansas microblading business plan has to respect. A cosmetologist or esthetician license, which does cover eyebrow services performed with make-up and temporary methods, confers no authority to implant pigment, and a cosmetic tattoo artist license confers no authority to cut hair, perform facials or do nails. A studio offering both kinds of work holds both kinds of license, practitioner by practitioner and, as the establishment section below shows, premises license by premises license as well.
Kansas microblading at a glance
| Item | Kansas requirement |
|---|---|
| Practitioner credential | Cosmetic tattoo artist license, Board of Cosmetology body art program, under K.S.A. 65-1940 and following and K.A.R. 69-15 |
| Training | 600 hours in an approved school, or 1,200 hours under an approved trainer, each including at least 50 completed procedures, plus 8 hours of infection control and bloodborne pathogen continuing education beyond the curriculum |
| Entry requirements | Age 18, high school diploma or equivalent. The apprentice license for trainer based training costs $15 |
| Examination | Theory examination, written, closed book, at most 150 multiple choice questions in at most two hours, one section entirely on Kansas law, plus a practical examination; 75 percent required on each theory section and on the practical |
| Fees | Examination application $50, written examination $75, practical examination $75, initial license application $50, under K.A.R. 69-15-30 |
| Renewal | Every two years at $50, with 5 hours of infection control and bloodborne pathogen continuing education. Late inside six months adds the $25 delinquent fee and 8 hours of continuing education |
| The studio itself | Body art establishment license: $50 application and $50 renewal, one year term expiring the last day of the month a year after issuance; late renewal inside 60 days adds the $30 delinquent establishment fee |
| Cosmetology licenses | Neither substitute for the other. A cosmetology establishment license does not cover body art at the same address |
| Entity filing | Articles of Organization $85 online or $90 on paper; information report every two years, $90 online or $110 on paper, due April 15 of the formation year parity |
| Sales tax | Microblading services are not taxed. Retail product sales are taxable at the 6.5 percent state rate plus local rates; register with the Department of Revenue |
The cosmetic tattoo artist license, step by step
The route starts with eligibility. K.A.R. 69-15-2 and 69-15-3 build the cosmetic tattoo artist credential on an applicant who is at least 18 years old, holds a high school diploma or its equivalent, and completes board approved training, accumulating at least 50 completed procedures along the way. Training runs on one of two tracks: 600 hours in a board approved school, or 1,200 hours under a board approved trainer, with a curriculum weighted toward clinical practice at 30 percent, machines and equipment at 20 percent, and safety, sanitation and bloodborne pathogens at 15 percent, the balance spread across skin, needles, color theory, placement, client handling, business operations and Kansas law. Either track adds 8 hours of infection control and bloodborne pathogen continuing education beyond the curriculum itself.
| Credential | Route | Key terms |
|---|---|---|
| Cosmetic tattoo artist | 600 school hours or 1,200 trainer hours, 50 completed procedures, board examinations | Initial license application $50; biennial renewal $50 with 5 hours of continuing education |
| Tattoo artist | The same training framework in tattooing | The same fee schedule and renewal cycle |
| Body piercer | The same training framework in piercing | The same fee schedule and renewal cycle |
| Apprentice | Licensed while training under an approved trainer | $15 license fee, under K.A.R. 69-15-30 |
| Trainer | Five years of full time practice at 1,500 or more hours a year, a syllabus filed with the board, one trainee at a time under direct supervision, holding a concurrent practitioner license | $15 trainer license fee |
The examination is the program's real gate, and its structure is unusually specific. Under K.A.R. 69-15-7, amended effective September 6, 2024, the theory examination is written and closed book, at most 150 multiple choice questions answered in at most two hours, with one section devoted entirely to Kansas law, and the practical examination may itself be written. Passing means at least 75 percent on each section of the theory examination and 75 percent on the practical. A temporary permit can bridge the wait until the next regularly scheduled examination. The fee schedule at K.A.R. 69-15-30 prices the sequence: examination application $50, written examination $75, practical examination $75, and the initial license application $50.
Renewal is biennial and education based. The license renews at $50 with 5 hours of infection control and bloodborne pathogen continuing education in the cycle. A license renewed within six months after expiration costs the renewal fee plus the $25 delinquent fee and 8 hours of continuing education; past six months the applicant files an application with the renewal and delinquent fees and the same 8 hours, a package the board's reinstatement form prices at $125 in total.
The body art establishment license
The studio is licensed separately from the artists, under its own rule. K.A.R. 69-15-14 requires the body art establishment license to be applied for, with its fee, before the establishment opens. The fee schedule at K.A.R. 69-15-30 prices the establishment application at $50 and the establishment renewal at $50, with a $30 delinquent establishment fee and $25 for a duplicate. The license expires one year from the last day of the month it was issued, renewal is due before expiration, and a late renewal is available within 60 days after expiration on the renewal fee plus the delinquent fee.
The practical consequence for a beauty business is duplication, in a precise sense: the body art establishment license and the cosmetology establishment license are separate filings with the same board, and neither covers the other's practice. A salon adding a microblading room holds its cosmetology establishment license for the salon floor and a body art establishment license for the brow room, each on its own application, its own fee and its own renewal anniversary. A standalone microblading studio holds only the body art license, but it holds it in its own right, and the artists working in it each hold the cosmetic tattoo artist license, since practitioner and premises are licensed independently throughout the Kansas body art framework.
Forming your business entity
Most Kansas microblading businesses 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 parity: 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, at the price of holding the business's liabilities personally, a trade that sits badly next to a practice built on needles and pigment.
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 microblading business 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 body art establishment 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 number anchors the studio's registrations that follow: the Department of Revenue accounts, the Department of Labor employer file if the studio hires, and the merchant account that takes deposits for appointments, which is where a microblading business's money actually moves.
Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every fee, pigment and supply order, rent payment and deposit through it. Microblading economics are deposit heavy and appointment based, with touch-up pricing spread across months, and clean separate books are what make the studio's compliance calendar survivable: a biennial practitioner renewal, an annual establishment renewal on the studio's own anniversary, sales tax filings on the assigned schedule and an information report every other April 15. The account also draws the line that matters if an artist's classification is ever questioned: the studio's money and a renting artist's 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 cosmetic tattooing is not on it. 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. A microblading session is none of those, so the service charge carries no sales tax, unlike the states elsewhere in this series that wrote permanent cosmetics into their taxable service lists by name.
The register still needs the tax, because the studio sells things. Aftercare products, cleansers and retail goods are sales of tangible personal property, taxable at the 6.5 percent state rate, with the city and county local rates for the studio'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.
Working inside a salon and worker classification
The common Kansas arrangement, a microblading artist renting a room inside an established salon, stacks two licensing systems in one address. The salon floor runs on the salon's cosmetology establishment license, and the brow room runs on a body art establishment license, because the cosmetology license does not extend to tattooing. The artist's own credential is the cosmetic tattoo artist license regardless of whose room it is, and both licenses are displayed and renewed on their own cycles. Where the brow room shares space with another business, the partition discipline that runs through Kansas establishment rules is the practical standard to build to: a defined, separated treatment room rather than a curtained corner of the salon floor.
Classification follows control, as it does everywhere in this cluster. An artist who sets their own prices, hours and client list, collects their own money and carries their own supplies and insurance reads as an independent business renting space. An artist whose schedule, prices, products and clients the salon controls reads as an employee whatever the agreement calls them, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading. Put the arrangement in writing either way, and name in it which business holds the body art establishment license for the room, because that license, not the lease, is what the board inspects against.
Hiring employees in Kansas
The first hire registers the studio 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 studio 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 studio 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. A studio training its own future artist should note the body art framework's shape as well: a trainee works under an apprentice license, under one approved trainer at a time, and the trainer's own license and syllabus are part of the studio's compliance file. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same first hire checklist, arranged before the first employee's first shift.
Local rules for a Kansas microblading business
The state licenses do not finish the opening. A studio 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 body art business at the address before any of the licensing matters: body art uses are zoned more restrictively than salons in many Kansas cities, and neither the practitioner license nor the establishment license answers the use question. Confirm the use in writing with the local government before a lease is signed.
The shared space patterns deserve a line of their own. A brow room inside a licensed salon needs the body art establishment license for the room even though the building is already licensed for cosmetology, and a body art establishment sharing space with a different kind of business should build to the separated room standard the Kansas establishment rules use. A beauty practice inside an adult care home or a long-term care unit of a medical care facility is exempt from board licensure on the cosmetology side, but that exemption is written for cosmetology services, and a studio should not read it over to tattooing without the board's own confirmation.
Insurance for a Kansas microblading business
Nothing in the body art statutes or rules, as read for this guide, conditions the cosmetic tattoo artist license or the establishment license on an insurance filing, so the insurance stack is set by risk and by contract rather than by the board. Professional liability tailored to permanent cosmetics is the core policy, and it is the cover a general beauty policy most often excludes without a specific endorsement, which is the question to put to the broker in writing before the first client.
General liability for the premises and property coverage for machines, furniture, pigment stock and build out complete the standard stack. Landlords, and salon landlords renting a room to an artist in particular, 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 microblading business in the body art rules, so treat any figure quoted as a state requirement as a sales line.
Your Kansas renewal calendar
| Item | Cycle | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Cosmetic tattoo artist license | Every two years, with 5 hours of infection control and bloodborne pathogen continuing education | $50 renewal; $25 delinquent fee and 8 hours of continuing education inside six months; $125 reinstatement package after six months |
| Body art establishment license | Every year, expiring one year from the last day of the month of issuance; late renewal inside 60 days only | $50 application and $50 renewal; $30 delinquent establishment fee |
| LLC information report | Every two years, due April 15 of the formation year parity, filed with the Secretary of State | $90 online or $110 on paper; forfeiture after a three month delinquency window |
| Assumed name | No filing exists or is required in Kansas | None |
| Sales tax returns | Filed electronically with the Department of Revenue on the assigned schedule | Tax collected on retail product sales only; microblading services are not taxed |
| Unemployment insurance reports | Quarterly, Form K-CNS 100, due the last day of the month following each quarter | New employer rate 1.75 percent on the first $15,100 of wages per employee in 2026 |
Official sources
- Kansas Board of Cosmetology: the body art program, cosmetic tattoo artist licensing, training, examinations and establishments
- K.S.A. 65-1940 through 65-1954: the body art statutes, on Justia's Kansas code
- K.A.R. 69-15: the body art rules, including 69-15-2 and 69-15-3 training, 69-15-7 examinations, 69-15-14 establishments and 69-15-30 fees
- 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 microblading FAQ
What license do you need to microblade in Kansas?
A cosmetic tattoo artist license from the Kansas Board of Cosmetology's body art program, under K.S.A. 65-1940 and following and K.A.R. 69-15. Microblading is cosmetic tattooing in Kansas law, licensed alongside the tattoo artist and body piercer licenses. A cosmetology or esthetician license does not authorize it, and the cosmetic tattoo license does not authorize cosmetology services in return.
How much training does a Kansas cosmetic tattoo artist need?
One of two routes under K.A.R. 69-15-2 and 69-15-3: 600 hours of training in a board approved school including at least 50 completed procedures, or 1,200 hours of training under a board approved trainer including at least 50 completed procedures, plus 8 hours of infection control and bloodborne pathogen continuing education beyond the curriculum in either case. Applicants must be 18 and hold a high school diploma or its equivalent. Training under an approved trainer runs on an apprentice license priced at $15, and applicants then pass the board's theory and practical examinations at 75 percent.
What does the Kansas cosmetic tattoo license cost?
The fee schedule at K.A.R. 69-15-30 prices the path: examination application $50, written examination $75, practical examination $75, initial license application $50, and biennial license renewal $50 with 5 hours of infection control continuing education. The apprentice license is $15 and the trainer license is $15. A license renewed late inside six months adds the $25 delinquent fee and 8 hours of continuing education, and the board's reinstatement package prices renewal after six months at $125.
Does a microblading studio need an establishment license in Kansas?
Yes, its own. K.A.R. 69-15-14 requires a body art establishment license, applied for and paid before the establishment opens: $50 for the application and $50 a year to renew on the fee schedule at K.A.R. 69-15-30, expiring one year from the last day of the month it was issued, with late renewal available inside 60 days on the renewal fee plus the $30 delinquent establishment fee. A cosmetology establishment license for the same address does not cover body art; the two licenses are separate filings with the same board.
Is microblading subject to sales tax in Kansas?
No. Kansas imposes its 6.5 percent retailers' sales tax only on the categories K.S.A. 79-3603 enumerates, and cosmetic tattooing is not among them, so the microblading charge carries no sales tax. Aftercare and other retail products sold at the studio are taxable sales of tangible personal property at 6.5 percent plus local rates, so register with the Department of Revenue and itemize services and products separately.