How to Start a Lash Studio in Maryland

Who licenses lash services in Maryland

Lash services 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. That one Board licenses the practitioners who do lash work, registers the salons where the work is performed, and writes the fee schedule that prices both layers. A lash studio therefore has to satisfy the same Board twice, once for the hands and once for the premises, before the business stack around it, the entity, the tax accounts and the local permits, even comes into play.

The rest of the Maryland stack sits with other agencies, and keeping the agencies straight saves real time. The State Department of Assessments and Taxation, SDAT, forms entities and takes trade names and the annual Form 1 filing. The Comptroller of Maryland runs sales tax registration. The Division of Unemployment Insurance in the Department of Labor runs employer accounts. Your city or county controls zoning and issues the use and occupancy permit that the Board requires with a salon permit application.

Maryland lash studio at a glance

The limited eyelash license, step by step

Maryland changed the legal position of lash work twice in two years, and a new studio needs both changes. Senate Bill 1044 in 2024 put lash services inside the definition of esthetic services, so from October 1, 2024, lash work required a cosmetologist license or an esthetician license. The Board announced enforcement grace on that requirement until October 1, 2025. House Bill 1223 in 2025, effective October 1, 2025, then created the route most lash artists now use: a limited license to provide eyelash extension services. The current statute lists that limited license among the license types the Board issues and includes providing eyelash extension services in the practice of cosmetology. The limited license is a real practitioner license, not a registration and not a certificate from a private course.

The qualification is written in House Bill 1223 at section 5-305(c). An applicant must be at least 17 years old and must have successfully completed 9th grade or the equivalent. Training follows one of two routes: serving as a registered apprentice for at least 3 months, or successfully completing at least 100 hours of instruction in providing eyelash extension services in a cosmetology school approved by the Maryland State Department of Education or the Maryland Higher Education Commission in consultation with the Board. The applicant then passes a written examination and a practical examination administered by the Board, with examination fees paid to the Board testing service. The license fee is $28, the Board standard limited license fee in its fee schedule. The Board Permanent Eyelash Technician License page confirms the process is now fully implemented, with Board approved 100 hour programs enrolling students.

The statute defines the service itself, and the definition is the boundary of the limited license. Providing eyelash extension services means cleaning the eye area, applying eyelash primers and adhesives, eyelash extensions and sealant, and drying the eye area. Work outside that definition belongs to the wider licenses. A licensed cosmetologist, trained over 1,500 hours of school or 24 months as a registered apprentice, and a licensed esthetician, trained over 600 hours or 12 months as a registered apprentice, can each perform lash work under their own licenses. Build the menu around the licenses on the wall, not around the services clients ask for first.

The salon permit and your lash premises

A practitioner license alone does not open a studio, because Maryland ties the work to a permitted place. Under section 5-605, a licensee must be affiliated with a registered salon to perform services. Lash services are therefore performed affiliated with a registered salon, and a lash only premises runs as a salon under a salon permit. The original salon permit costs $225, which is the $56 salon owner fee plus the $169 pre opening inspection fee in the Board fee schedule at COMAR 09.22.01.12. Renewal is $56 every two years. The permit, the affiliation and the practitioner license are three separate facts, and an inspector can ask about each of them independently.

The application is gated by local government. A salon permit application requires an approved use and occupancy permit from the local zoning agency, submitted with the application. The zoning answer for that exact address has to exist before the Board application is complete. Secure the space, confirm the use with the local zoning agency, obtain the use and occupancy permit, and then file for the salon permit and complete the pre opening inspection. Signing a long lease before the zoning answer is in hand reverses the safe order and puts rent ahead of permission.

Forming your business entity

Most Maryland lash studios 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 lash room in Maryland

Many lash artists start by renting a room rather than opening a storefront, and Maryland handles that model through affiliation rather than through a rental license. There is no booth renter license and no chair rental license in the Board fee schedule. An artist who rents space inside an existing permitted salon works affiliated with that salon under its salon permit, and the salon permit is the premises credential for the room. An artist who takes her own space, with her own door, her own clients and her own name on the lease, is running a salon for permit purposes and holds her own salon permit for that space at the $225 original cost described above, with the use and occupancy permit in hand first.

What decides which shape you are in is the substance of the arrangement: whose salon the room is part of, who holds the permit for the premises, and who controls the client relationship, 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 rather than the label in the rental agreement. Paper a real tenancy like a tenancy, with a written agreement, a set rent, your own trade name filing where you trade under your own name, and your own tax accounts for any retail products you sell.

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 lash studio

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 lash studio

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. For lash work the professional liability question deserves particular care, because the service involves adhesives and fine tools working close to a client eyes, and a reaction or injury claim is the defining risk of the trade. Carry professional liability written for the services you actually perform, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for beds, lights, equipment and retail stock. A landlord will often name the coverage expected in the lease, and if other licensees work inside your permitted premises, your policy and theirs should both name the arrangement.

Your Maryland renewal calendar

Official sources

• State Board of Cosmetologists: Permanent Eyelash Technician License page, the implemented 100 hour program and examination process
• House Bill 1223 (2025): the limited license to provide eyelash extension services, training routes and service definition
• State Board of Cosmetologists: resources page, lash services inside esthetic services and enforcement position
• State Board of Cosmetologists: license requirements, age, education, training and salon permit categories
• State Board of Cosmetologists: renew a salon permit, $225 original, $56 renewal and affiliation under section 5-605
• State Board of Cosmetologists: continuing education from January 1, 2026
• Maryland Department of Labor, Employment Standards Service: minimum wage, tipped wage and overtime

Maryland lash studio FAQ