How to Start a Massage Therapy Business in Maryland

Who licenses massage therapy in Maryland

Massage therapy in Maryland answers to the State Board of Massage Therapy Examiners, a board inside the Maryland Department of Health, under Title 6 of the Health Occupations Article and the board's rules at COMAR 10.65. It is a health occupations board rather than a cosmetology board: education in contact hours from an approved institution, a criminal history records check, a national examination plus a Maryland jurisprudence examination, and continuing education at every renewal. The board licenses the practitioner. It does not license the establishment at the state level, a distinction owners arriving from states with a studio license often get backwards.

Two credentials have shared the Maryland register for years, and this guide is written at the moment one of them ends. The Licensed Massage Therapist, or LMT, is the full license at 750 contact hours. The Registered Massage Practitioner, or RMP, is the legacy credential at 600 contact hours, which the board stopped issuing on October 1, 2024 and which converts or expires on a deadline inside this guide's review period. Anyone planning a Maryland massage business now plans it as an LMT business.

Around the board's license sits the standard Maryland business stack. The entity files with SDAT and then files Form 1, the $300 Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return, every April 15. A trade name costs $25 and runs five years. Sales tax at 6 percent reaches retail products and never the massage service. Employment runs through the Division of Unemployment Insurance at a 2.6 percent new employer rate on the first $8,500 of wages. This guide walks the license first, the premises second, and the stack after.

Maryland massage at a glance

The massage therapist license and the RMP phase out

The Licensed Massage Therapist requirements in COMAR 10.65 and on the board's licensure page run as a checklist. The applicant must be at least 18 years old, of good moral character, and must submit to a criminal history records check. Education means transcripts from a Maryland Higher Education Commission approved institution documenting at least 750 contact hours in a curriculum endorsed by the Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation, known as COMTA, or an equivalent Board approved curriculum. The applicant must hold current CPR at least at the Basic Life Support level. Examination is two part: a Board approved national examination, and the board names the MBLEx, NCBTMB and NCCAOM examinations, and the Maryland Jurisprudence Examination at 75 percent or better. The COMAR fee schedule at 10.65.07.02 prices the route, all non refundable: application $150, license fee $200, state examination fee $275, and reexamination $300.

The Registered Massage Practitioner credential is the same framework at 600 contact hours, historically used for practice in nonhealth care settings, and its remaining life is fixed by Chapters 705 and 706 of 2022 and COMAR 10.65.01.06. The board may not issue an initial RMP registration on or after October 1, 2024, so there is no new RMP route. An existing RMP may practice in nonhealth care settings until October 31, 2026, and on or before that date the board shall convert an RMP's registration to a license on request under the conversion regulations, with routes that include 10 years of continuous practice in good standing or additional coursework, for a $100 conversion fee. Beginning November 1, 2026, every person practicing massage therapy in Maryland must be licensed. An RMP who has not converted by that date is not grandfathered into practice. That is the headline trap of Maryland massage in 2026, and a studio employing an RMP should treat conversion as a dated project, not a formality to remember in October.

Renewal is biennial and runs into the same cliff for everyone: licenses expire October 31 of even numbered years, and the board's 2026 notice set the regular window from August 17 to October 31, 2026. The COMAR schedule prices renewal at $250, a late renewal fee of $200 within 30 days, and reinstatement at $475 after 31 days, alongside inactive renewal at $50, reactivation at $350, and a duplicate license at $40, or $20 if ordered at renewal. This guide publishes a fee conflict honestly: the board's own 2026 renewal notice charged LMTs $276 for the 2026 renewal, with RMPs at $250, late renewal for LMTs at $476, and reinstatement for LMTs at $501. Read $250 as the COMAR schedule and $276 as what the board charged for the 2026 cycle. Budget from the notice, because it is the invoice you will actually pay.

Continuing education is a renewal condition with a prescribed shape. Each two year cycle requires 24 hours: 3 hours of ethics or jurisprudence, 3 hours of communicable diseases including HIV and AIDS, 2 hours of diversity, cultural competency or implicit bias, and 16 hours of elective continuing education pertaining to human anatomy, inside the cycle window. Current CPR is required at renewal, at the Healthcare Provider level for LMTs and Basic CPR for RMPs. A 1 hour implicit bias and structural racism training applies at the first renewal after April 1, 2026 and counts toward the CE hours. Track each therapist's CE file across the cycle, because the October 31 cliff arrives for the whole register at once.

Premises: no state massage establishment license

Maryland has no state massage establishment license. COMAR 10.65 licenses the practitioner, and there is no establishment category in it for a studio, a spa or a rented room to hold. Owners arriving from states that license the business location will search the board's materials for a premises application that does not exist. The state level premises duties are the indirect ones: the business filings in this guide, zoning and occupancy locally, and a licensed practitioner for every pair of hands performing massage. A studio cannot cure an unlicensed therapist with well papered premises. The two questions are separate, and only one is asked by the state board.

The local layer fills part of that space. Some counties license massage businesses locally, and Montgomery County is named here as a labeled county example, with no county fee published because none was verified from an official county source. Ask your county, before the lease is signed, whether it licenses massage establishments. Landlords and insurers will also ask for the business's licenses, and the honest Maryland file shows the therapists' licenses, the SDAT standing, the trade name, and any county license your county issues.

Forming your business entity

Most owners who sign a lease, take deposits or hire help form a limited liability company, and Maryland forms entities in a place out of state guides rarely name. Entities are formed at the State Department of Assessments and Taxation, known as SDAT, through its Charter Division and the Maryland Business Express portal, not with a Secretary of State. The Articles of Organization for an LLC cost $100 under section 1-203 of the Corporations and Associations Article. An optional name reservation holds a name for 30 days for $25, and a certificate of status costs $20.

The filing Maryland owners remember is Form 1, the Annual Report and Business Personal Property Return, which every LLC and other registered entity files with SDAT every year for $300, due April 15, with a free two month extension to June 15 when requested on time. The fee is owed whether or not the business operated. An entity with tangible personal property in Maryland at a total original cost of $20,000 or more also completes the personal property schedules, and the county or city where the property sits bills that tax separately. Late filing draws an initial penalty of one tenth of one percent of the county assessment, plus interest at 2 percent of the initial penalty amount for each 30 days the return is late, and continued failure to file can end in forfeiture of the right to do business in Maryland. SDAT waives the fee for a year in which the entity provides evidence of MarylandSaves compliance. A sole proprietor with no entity files no Form 1, because the duty attaches to registered entities. None of these filings licenses massage therapy, and no license in this guide forms your entity. The two systems do not substitute for each other.

Business names and the SDAT trade name filing

Maryland registers trade names with SDAT as well. Anyone doing business under a name other than their own legal name files a trade name application with SDAT for $25, and expedited service adds $50. The core filers are sole proprietors and general partnerships trading under a business name, and entities register trade names too for names other than the legal entity name. The filing is effective for five years from acceptance and may be renewed during the last six months of that period for another five years at $25. If it is not renewed, SDAT forfeits the trade name and a new application is required.

A trade name registration is a public notice filing, not an entity and not a license, and it creates no liability shield. What it does is connect the name clients see on your door and booking page to the person or entity legally behind it, which is why banks and landlords ask for it. Keep one consistent story across the trade name filing, your SDAT record, your signage and your tax registrations.

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 in this guide. A sole proprietor or single member LLC can technically operate on the owner's Social Security number for some federal purposes, but banking, card processing and employer registrations run more cleanly on an EIN, and handing your 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 filing fee, product order and rent payment through it. A clean account is what makes the money side of a business that runs on deposits and prepaid packages provable at tax time. It 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 on top of it, so the rate at your register is the same in every Maryland town. Services are taxed only when the Tax General Article names them, and beauty services are not among the enumerated taxable services. Massage is a beauty and wellness service, and services including massage are not taxable in Maryland, so you do not collect sales tax on a massage session or a prepaid package of sessions. Retail sales are different: tangible personal property a client takes home is taxable at 6 percent. Oils, tools, heat packs and any other retail product a client takes home are taxable sales at 6 percent, and a practice that sells retail products needs the sales tax license before the first product sale. Itemize services and products separately at checkout, and the tax follows the product lines only.

A business that makes 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 license carries no state fee. Businesses that sell goods may also need a county trader's license from the Clerk of the Circuit Court, with fees varying by county and inventory. A services only business may never trigger the sales tax license. The week you add a retail shelf, register first and sell second.

Renting a treatment room in Maryland

Massage therapists rent rooms in wellness centers, spas, gyms and suite buildings, and Maryland's framework decides what paper those arrangements need. Because there is no state establishment license, there is no premises license for a host to lend you and none for you to hold for the room. What decides whether a room rental is complete is the county position, since some counties license massage businesses locally, and the practitioner's own license, which travels with the therapist into any room. Ask the county question for the exact address, in writing, before the first appointment in the room.

The second question is classification, answered by the substance of the arrangement rather than its label. A therapist renting a room to run her own practice sets her own schedule and prices, books her own clients, collects her own money, and pays a rent that does not float with her treatment revenue. A therapist whose schedule, prices and clients the host controls looks like an employee under the tests Maryland applies to the actual working relationship, whatever the agreement calls it. A written rental agreement is evidence, not a verdict. Paper a real tenancy like a tenancy and a real job like a job.

Hiring employees in Maryland

Your first hire makes you an employer for Maryland unemployment insurance, administered by the Division of Unemployment Insurance in the Department of Labor. Employers register with the Division, report wages and pay contributions quarterly. The tax applies to the first $8,500 of each employee's wages per year, and the new employer rate is 2.6 percent, which caps the new employer cost at $221 per employee per year before your own experience rate replaces it. Inside a massage practice, hiring carries the register's sharpest deadline: from November 1, 2026, every person practicing massage therapy in Maryland must be licensed, so verify each therapist's license, and each legacy RMP's conversion, before the first shift.

The wage floor is the other number to build into your prices. Maryland's minimum wage is $15.00 an hour statewide for most employees. Tipped employees must be paid at least $3.63 an hour in cash wages, with wages plus tips equal to at least the minimum wage and 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's County at $15.30 an hour, and Montgomery County sets higher size based rates of its own. Overtime runs at one and one half times the regular rate past 40 hours in a week.

Local rules for a Maryland massage practice

The local layer matters more for massage than the absence of a state establishment license might suggest. Your city or county controls zoning, and a massage practice has to be a permitted use at the address you choose. Confirm that before you sign a lease, and in the same round of calls ask the county whether it licenses massage businesses locally, as some Maryland counties do, with Montgomery County named here as an example. Local business licenses, occupancy permits and any county process vary by jurisdiction, and a county answer a neighboring county does not share is normal in this trade. It is the system working as Maryland built it.

Get the zoning and county licensing answers in writing before the lease is signed. The expensive mistakes in a massage launch are sequencing mistakes: a space the locality will not approve, a county establishment license discovered after the build out, and an October spent discovering that a therapist's credential needed conversion by October 31. The cheapest week in the project is the one spent confirming the space, the county and every practitioner's status first.

Insurance for a Maryland massage practice

The board's published framework does not state a required insurance amount as a condition of the massage license, so treat insurance as a risk decision and a lease decision, and verify the board's current application checklist when you file. In practice, a landlord will name the coverage expected in the lease, and a hands on practice should carry professional liability for the treatments, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for tables and equipment. If other therapists work inside your premises, your policy and theirs should both name the arrangement, because the business on the door is the name a client finds first when something goes wrong.

Your Maryland renewal calendar

Official sources

• State Board of Massage Therapy Examiners: licensure page, LMT requirements, examinations and CPR
• State Board of Massage Therapy Examiners: renewal page, continuing education and the October 31 cycle
• COMAR online: 10.65.01.06 on the RMP phase out and conversion, and 10.65.07.02, the board fee schedule
• Maryland General Assembly: Health Occupations Title 6 and Chapters 705 and 706 of 2022 on the RMP phase out
• State Department of Assessments and Taxation: entity formation, Form 1 annual report and trade name filings
• Maryland Business Express: SDAT filings and the Combined Registration Application
• Comptroller of Maryland: sales and use tax, the 6 percent rate and taxable services
• Department of Labor, Employment Standards Service: Maryland minimum wage and overtime law

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