How to Start an Esthetics Business in Maryland

Who licenses estheticians in Maryland

Estheticians in Maryland are licensed by the State Board of Cosmetologists, in the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing in the Maryland Department of Labor. The Board works under Title 5 of the Business Occupations and Professions Article, and its rules sit at COMAR 09.22. Maryland licenses esthetics as a limited license inside cosmetology rather than as a standalone profession: the esthetician license covers esthetic services, the full cosmetologist license covers them as part of a wider practice, and the premises where either license is used runs under a salon permit from the same Board. One regulator therefore controls the practitioner, the premises and the renewal rules that changed at the start of 2026.

One boundary in the Board rules shapes an esthetics menu from the first day. Cosmetic tattooing, including microblading, is prohibited in salons under COMAR 09.22.02.03.F, and the Board treats microblading and other permanent, semi permanent and long lasting makeup as cosmetic tattooing. An esthetics business does not reach permanent makeup, no matter how natural the service feels next to brow shaping and tinting on a service menu.

Maryland esthetics at a glance

The esthetician limited license, step by step

The esthetician license is a limited license, and its training route is the shorter of the two doors into skin services in Maryland. An applicant must be at least 17 years old and must have completed 9th grade or a GED equivalent. Training is either 600 hours in an approved cosmetology school or 12 months as a registered apprentice. The apprentice route runs inside a licensed salon under Board approval, with a sponsoring arrangement and monthly training reports, and it trades a longer calendar for training inside a working business. Either route ends at the same place: a written examination and a practical examination administered by the Board, with examination fees paid directly to the Board testing service. The esthetician license fee itself is $28 under the fee schedule at COMAR 09.22.01.12, and all Board fees are nonrefundable.

The wider door is the cosmetologist license: 1,500 hours of school or 24 months as a registered apprentice, the same age and education floor, and the same two examinations. A cosmetologist license also covers esthetic services, so a practitioner who wants hair and skin in one practice takes the longer course once rather than stacking limited licenses. For a dedicated skin practice, the esthetician route at 600 hours is the direct path, and the choice between the two is a menu decision made before school starts: esthetics only, or esthetics inside a full cosmetology practice that can also cut, color and style hair.

Renewal changed on January 1, 2026, and the change applies to estheticians holding a license to renew. Maryland now requires 6 hours of approved continuing education as a condition of renewal: 2 hours in required topics covering health, safety, welfare, sanitation, or Board laws and regulations, plus 4 hours of electives within the scope of practice of the license. Courses must be taken inside the current renewal term and before the renewal date, and the requirement applies per license held. House Bill 1547 adds a separate one time requirement beginning January 1, 2026: a 1 hour domestic violence awareness training from Department approved training, required for licensure and for renewal. A licensee renewing in 2026 should confirm the details on the Board continuing education page before the renewal date arrives.

The limited service salon permit and your premises

The premises side of an esthetics practice is the Limited Service Salon Owner permit, the Board permit category written for a salon offering a limited practice such as esthetic services, alongside the full service salon permit. The original permit costs $225, which is the $56 salon owner fee plus the $169 pre opening inspection fee in COMAR 09.22.01.12. Renewal is $56 every two years, and the Board emails renewal notices about 60 days before expiration. The practitioner license and the salon permit are separate credentials held for separate things: the license follows the person, and the permit belongs to the premises and its owner, and a practice needs both layers in place before the first paying client.

Two rules connect the permit to the place. First, affiliation: under section 5-605, a licensee must be affiliated with a registered salon to perform services, so esthetic services are performed inside a salon holding a permit, whether that salon is your own limited service premises or an existing salon you work within. Second, the gate in front of the application: a salon permit application requires an approved use and occupancy permit from the local zoning agency, submitted with the application. The zoning answer for the exact address therefore comes before the Board filing, not after it. The $225 permit is spent on an address, so the address has to be right first.

Forming your business entity

Most Maryland esthetics practices form as a limited liability company, and Maryland routes the filing differently from most states. Entities are formed with the State Department of Assessments and Taxation, known as SDAT, through its Charter Division. There is no Secretary of State for entities in Maryland. The Articles of Organization for an LLC cost $100. An optional name reservation holds a name for 30 days for $25, and a certificate of status costs $20 when a landlord, a lender or a payment processor asks for proof that the entity is in good standing.

Every Maryland LLC files Form 1, the Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return, with SDAT every year. The filing fee is $300 and the return is due April 15. A free two month extension moves the deadline to June 15. The fee is owed whether or not the business operated during the year and whether or not it owns any property, so a studio that opens late in the year still has the same April filing in front of it. An entity that owns, leases or uses tangible personal property in Maryland with a total original cost of $20,000 or more also completes the personal property schedules on Form 1, and the county or city where the property sits assesses and bills the personal property tax separately from the $300 state filing fee. A late return draws an initial penalty of one tenth of one percent of the county assessment, plus interest at 2 percent for each 30 days or part of 30 days the return is late, and continued failure to file can lead to forfeiture of the right to do business in Maryland. One relief valve exists: SDAT waives the annual report filing fee for a year in which the entity provides evidence that it complies with the MarylandSaves employer savings program requirements. A sole proprietor with no entity does not file Form 1, because the annual report duty attaches to registered entities.

Business names and the trade name filing

Maryland calls its trade name filing a trade name application, and it also lives with SDAT. Anyone doing business under a name other than their own legal name files the application for $25. Sole proprietors and general partnerships trading under a business name are the core filers, and entities register trade names too when they trade under a name other than the legal entity name. The filing is effective for five years from acceptance. It may be renewed during the last six months of that period for another five years at $25, and if it is not renewed, SDAT forfeits the trade name and a new application is required. File it before the signage, the booking page and the bank account start using the name, so the public record and the storefront agree from the first day.

A trade name registration is not an entity and creates no liability shield. It is a public notice that a person or an entity is trading under that name. The name on the trade name filing, the name on your salon permit application and the name your clients see should tell one consistent story, because inspectors, landlords, banks and clients all read those records side by side. Choosing the name is also the moment to check that another Maryland business is not already trading under it, since the $25 filing does not give you trademark rights and does not stop anyone else from using a similar name.

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. You need the EIN to open the business bank account, to run payroll once you hire, and to complete the state registrations described in this guide, which key on the federal number. A single member LLC can use the owner Social Security number for some federal purposes, but the bank account, the card processing and the employer registrations all run more cleanly on an EIN, and handing a personal number to every vendor is a habit worth avoiding from day one.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every license fee, product order and rent payment through it. The sales tax filings, the quarterly unemployment reports and the April Form 1 filing all assume the business can show its own books. A clean account, separate from personal spending, is the cheapest compliance tool in this guide.

Sales tax through the Comptroller

Maryland charges a sales and use tax of 6 percent statewide, and there is no local or county sales tax added on top of it. The line that matters at your register is what the tax reaches. Maryland taxes retail sales of tangible personal property and only the services the Tax General Article names, and beauty services are not among the named taxable services. The Comptroller treats haircuts as the standard example of an untaxed service, and the same position covers skin services, lash services and the rest of a beauty service menu. You do not collect sales tax on service receipts. Product is different: shampoo, styling products, aftercare and anything else a client takes home is a retail sale, taxed at 6 percent.

A business making taxable retail sales needs a Maryland sales and use tax license from the Comptroller before it sells. Registration runs through the Combined Registration Application, available through Maryland Business Express, and the sales and use tax license carries no state fee. At the register, itemize services and products separately on every ticket, including packages that bundle a service with take home product, so the 6 percent tax follows the product lines only and your returns reconcile cleanly with your booking system at the end of each filing period.

Renting a treatment room in Maryland

A solo esthetician renting a treatment room is one of the most common shapes of this business, and Maryland handles the model through affiliation and the salon permit rather than through a room rental license. There is no booth renter license and no chair rental license in the Board fee schedule. An esthetician who rents a room inside an existing permitted salon works affiliated with that salon under its permit. An esthetician who takes her own space, with her own clients, her own booking and her own name on the lease, is running a salon for permit purposes and holds her own Limited Service Salon Owner permit for esthetic services at the $225 original cost, with the use and occupancy permit in hand before she applies.

The substance of the arrangement decides which shape you are in: whose salon the room belongs to, who holds the permit, and who controls the bookings, the prices and the hours. Whether a renter is an independent contractor or an employee for tax and unemployment purposes is a separate question, answered by looking at the actual working relationship, and a written rental agreement is evidence rather than a verdict. Paper a real tenancy like a tenancy, with a set rent that does not float with service revenue, your own trade name filing where you trade under your own name, and your own sales tax account for the retail products on your shelf.

Hiring employees in Maryland

Your first hire makes you a Maryland employer, and the unemployment insurance account is the registration to understand first. Employers register with the Division of Unemployment Insurance in the Maryland Department of Labor, report wages and pay contributions quarterly. The new employer rate is 2.6 percent, and it applies to the first $8,500 of each employee wages per year, which caps the new employer cost at a maximum of $221 per employee per year before your own experience rate takes over.

The wage floor is the other number to build into your prices. Maryland minimum wage is $15.00 an hour statewide. Tipped employees must be paid at least $3.63 an hour in cash wages, and cash wages plus tips must equal at least the state minimum wage, with the employer covering any gap. Two counties sit above the state floor as of July 1, 2026: Howard County at $16.00 an hour and Prince George County at $15.30 an hour, and Montgomery County sets its own higher schedule as well. Overtime runs at one and one half times the regular rate past 40 hours in a week. Commission and booth arrangements do not erase these floors for employees, so price the book against the wage that applies at your address.

Local rules for a Maryland esthetics business

The local layer comes first in Maryland, because the state salon permit application depends on it. Zoning and the use and occupancy permit are the opening questions at any address: the permit comes from the local zoning agency, it must show that this use is allowed in this space, and it is submitted with the salon permit application. Cities and counties also issue their own business licenses, and those licenses vary by jurisdiction, so the city or county where the premises sit is the authority for its own license, its own inspection sequence and its own fees. Businesses that sell goods may also need a county trader license from the Clerk of the Circuit Court, with fees that vary by county and inventory, which is one more reason to ask the local questions before the lease is signed.

Get the zoning answer and the use and occupancy permit in hand before you apply for the state permit and before you commit to a build out. Every state license in this guide is tied to a specific address, and money spent fitting out a space that cannot legally hold the business is the most expensive mistake in a Maryland launch. Confirming that in writing before money is spent is the cheapest step in the project.

Insurance for a Maryland esthetics business

The Board publishes no required insurance amount for a salon permit, so treat insurance as a risk decision and a lease decision rather than a licensing line item. In practice, a landlord will name the coverage expected in the lease, and an esthetics practice should carry professional liability written for its actual menu, since facials, peels, device based treatments, waxing and tinting each carry their own claim profiles, plus general liability for the premises and property coverage for equipment and retail stock. Make sure the policy description matches the services your license actually covers. A claim arising from a service outside both the license and the policy, such as permanent makeup performed in a salon where cosmetic tattooing is prohibited, is the worst seat in the building.

Your Maryland renewal calendar

Official sources

• State Board of Cosmetologists: license requirements, the 600 hour esthetician route and salon permit categories
• State Board of Cosmetologists: continuing education, 6 hours per renewal from January 1, 2026
• State Board of Cosmetologists: renew a salon permit, limited service permits, $225 original and $56 renewal
• State Board of Cosmetologists: resources page, including the prohibition on cosmetic tattooing in salons at COMAR 09.22.02.03.F
• Maryland Department of Labor, Employment Standards Service: minimum wage, tipped wage and overtime

Maryland esthetics FAQ