How to Start a Barbershop in Massachusetts

Who licenses barbershops in Massachusetts

Barbershops answer to the Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering, the combined board inside the Division of Occupational Licensure, but barbering is not folded into the cosmetology license. Barbering has its own statutory home in section 87H and its own regulations at 240 CMR 8.00, and the scope line runs in both directions. Section 87T defines barbering to include shaving or trimming the beard, cutting hair, facial and scalp massage and treatments, singeing, shampooing, applying hair tonics and dyeing hair. Cosmetology, defined in the same section, expressly does not include barbering, so the shave work on your menu belongs to licensed barbers, and a cosmetologist in the next chair cannot pick up the straight razor work under her own license.

The Board licenses two layers, as it does for salons. The barber license belongs to the person and proves training and examination. The barbershop license belongs to the location and the named owner, proves inspection, and is not transferable. Applications, renewals and reinstatements run online through the Division's eLIPSE platform, a notarized CORI form sits in every owner and applicant file, and anyone can verify a license through the Division's lookup before they sit in your chair.

Massachusetts barbershop at a glance

The barber license, step by step

The current route the Board publishes starts with school: a 1,000 hour course in a licensed barber school, then an application through eLIPSE and the written theory examination administered by PSI once the Board approves you to sit. The application fee is $66. Behind that school route, section 87H still carries the older doors into the trade, and they are worth knowing because experienced barbers moving into Massachusetts ask about them. The statute qualifies an applicant who studied and practiced barbering for two years as an apprentice under one or more registered barbers, or for at least six months in a properly equipped barber school or college under a registered barber followed by eighteen months as an apprentice, or who practiced the occupation for at least two years in Massachusetts or other states. The statute also calls for a registered physician's certificate that the applicant is free from infectious and contagious diseases.

The license renews on the board's barber calendar, not on your birthday: $78 every two years, expiring December 31 of odd years, with the standard $57 late renewal fee across the Division's boards. Board records classify barber licenses by type class, with the working barber carried as the BR M class, Master Barber, and the apprentice as BR A, renewing at $40 on the same December 31 odd year cycle. One reinstatement rule from section 87GG applies across the combined board: a license left unrenewed for more than three years returns only on a new application, the renewal fee, and a practical examination, so a barber who lets the license sleep through two renewal cycles should expect to test again.

The barbershop license and your premises

The shop is licensed under 240 CMR 8.00. The application fee is $130, the license renews every two years for $78 expiring June 30 of even years, and the application package mirrors the salon package with one fixture that decides inspections: your 8.5 by 11 inch floor plan, with stations labeled and square footage shown, must show at least one non shampoo sink with hot and cold water, and the Board's guidance is direct that shops without it fail inspection. Each owner files a 2x2 photo, a government ID and a notarized CORI form. Plumbing and electrical inspection forms go in if work was done, or the No Work Required form if none was. Every shop files a price list, and the same rule printed on the salon application applies here: gender pricing is prohibited.

Timing and transfer rules are strict. An incomplete barbershop application is held for 90 days, a shorter window than the 180 days the Division allows on individual applications, and after that you reapply. Section 87H requires Board inspection and approval before a registered barber opens a shop, moves a shop to a new location, or operates a shop that was previously approved for a prior owner, and the shop license at 240 CMR 8.04 is valid only for the location and the owner named on it. Owners must notify the Board immediately when they plan to sell an operating shop, the new owners file a new application, and the shop may remain open for 30 days after the ownership change before the new license is required. A barbershop can also host licensed massage therapists in the same space, but only under the dual use room provisions the cosmetology salon rules carry, which require the massage area to hold its own massage establishment license issued to the same person or entity as the shop license.

Forming your business entity

Most Massachusetts barbershops form as an LLC, and the Commonwealth prices the form at the top of the national range. The Certificate of Organization, filed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Corporations Division, costs $500, and the annual report costs another $500 every year, due on or before the anniversary date of the original filing. Both numbers sit in the LLC statute itself, M.G.L. c.156C, section 12(d), not in a fee schedule that can quietly change. The certificate names a resident agent for service of process, with the agent's consent, and states how the company is managed.

Price the whole life of the filing, not the first year. A shop that operates for a decade pays $500 to form and $500 ten more times to stay formed, which is real money against a barbershop's margins and a legitimate point in favor of comparing the sole proprietor route, where the same owner files no formation document and no annual report at all, at the cost of holding the business in his own name and liability. If the LLC is dissolved for missed reports, reinstatement costs $100 plus every owed annual report. Amending the certificate later costs $100, and changing the resident agent or office costs $25 on paper and nothing filed electronically. The Secretary of the Commonwealth registers the entity; the Board licenses the barbers and the shop; neither filing substitutes for the other.

Business names and the business certificate

Massachusetts files trade names at town hall, not at the state house. Under M.G.L. c.110, section 5, anyone conducting business under a name other than their real name files a business certificate with the clerk of every city or town where the business is located, and there is no state level DBA filing to complete instead. Sole proprietors and partnerships file, and so does an LLC or corporation doing business under a name different from its legal entity name, once the entity is registered with the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The certificate is signed under oath, runs four years, and renews.

Fees are set town by town. Boston, the labeled example used across this cluster, charges $65 at the City Clerk's office in 1 City Hall Square, adds a $35 non resident surcharge, charges $50 for a change of business address, and renews every four years for $65, in person or by mail with no online filing. Your town's figure will differ; call the clerk before you budget. Keep the name on the certificate, the name on the barbershop license application and the name over the door identical, because the Board licenses a named owner at a named location and a mismatch across the three records is the kind of small discrepancy that slows an inspection file.

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 register the employer accounts described below. A single member LLC can technically operate on the owner's Social Security number for some purposes, but banks, payment processors and the state employer registrations all 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 EIN exist, and run every license fee, product order and rent payment through it. A barbershop's cash and card mix makes clean books harder than in most retail, and the Department of Revenue registrations, the quarterly unemployment wage reports and the LLC annual report all assume the business can show its own records.

Sales tax through the Department of Revenue

Massachusetts taxes retail sales, not services, and barbering sits squarely on the service side. The statewide sales tax rate is 6.25 percent with no local sales tax anywhere in the Commonwealth, and M.G.L. c.64H reaches retail sales of tangible personal property plus a short list of named services that does not include haircuts, shaves or any other barbering work. Your service receipts carry no sales tax. The retail shelf is different: pomade, tonics and anything else a client takes home is a taxable retail sale at 6.25 percent, so ring services and products on separate lines.

The Department of Revenue's service enterprises regulation, 830 CMR 64H.1.1, names beauticians and applies the same logic to barbers: where the real object of the transaction is the service, an inconsequential transfer of product is not taxed, but product you bought under a resale certificate and then consumed in services without separately stating its charge becomes your own tax bill. Keep backbar stock and retail stock in separate purchase streams and the question never arises. Register through MassTaxConnect before the shop opens; DOR's registration procedure AP 616 requires registration to collect before the business actually opens, and the same account carries your employer withholding registration when you hire.

Chair rental in a Massachusetts barbershop

There is no chair rental license to apply for. The Board's salon application guidance states that it no longer issues or requires booth renter or booth shop licenses, and the same position covers barbershop chairs: a renting barber works inside your licensed shop, on his own barber license, under your shop license for the premises. The Board does not paper the arrangement at all. What the arrangement needs instead is a written agreement covering rent, product, booking and what happens to the chair if either license lapses, plus a business certificate and tax registrations for the renter's own business if he operates as one.

Then Massachusetts classification law has its say, and it is the part of this guide most likely to save a shop owner real money. Under M.G.L. c.149, section 148B, anyone performing a service for your business is presumed to be your employee unless all three statutory conditions hold: freedom from your control and direction in contract and in fact, an independently established trade of the same nature, and a service performed outside the usual course of your business. Cutting hair is the usual course of a barbershop's business, so the third condition fails for nearly every chair rental in the state, whatever the agreement calls the barber. The statute attaches the remedies of section 27C, personal liability for the officers who manage the entity, and unemployment and withholding exposure to a wrong answer. Many Massachusetts shops employ their barbers outright for exactly this reason; if you rent, have the structure reviewed against section 148B first.

Hiring employees in Massachusetts

Your first hire registers you as an employer in two places. The Department of Revenue takes your withholding registration through the same MassTaxConnect account as your sales tax registration, and the Department of Unemployment Assistance runs your unemployment insurance account. Unemployment liability attaches when you have one or more employees working at least one day a week for a minimum of 13 weeks in the calendar year, or when you pay $1,500 or more in wages in any calendar quarter. For 2026 the published new employer contribution rate is 2.42 percent on the first $15,000 of each employee's wages, a wage base set in M.G.L. c.151A, section 14. Established employers move to individually calculated rates with an annual rate notice by January 31, reports and contributions come due quarterly on April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31, and late payments bear interest at 12 percent.

The wage floor is the state number. The Massachusetts minimum wage is $15.00 an hour under M.G.L. c.151, section 1, in place since January 1, 2023. Barbers who regularly receive tips can be paid the service rate of $6.75 an hour under section 7, only with the arrangement explained to the worker in writing, and only while tips bring each pay period up to the full $15.00; the shop covers any shortfall. Paid family and medical leave contributions also run through your MassTaxConnect registration. Read the hiring section together with the chair rental section above: in Massachusetts the label on the arrangement does not decide who is an employee, the statute's three conditions do.

City, town and local rules

The local layer starts at the city or town clerk's office with your business certificate, and continues through zoning for a barbershop use, a building or occupancy permit for the buildout, and fire and life safety sign offs, none of which the state board handles. The state sequence stacks on the town's: plumbing and electrical work in the shop is documented on the Board's inspection forms, which are signed off locally, before the Board's own inspector approves the shop. A change of location is a state event as well as a new lease, because section 87H requires inspection and approval before you operate at the new address, and the shop license names the location it was issued for.

Local rules are also where signage, parking and storefront requirements live, and they differ enough between a Boston storefront, a Springfield strip center and a small town main street that no state guide can price them for you. Get the clerk's certificate, the zoning answer and the inspection schedule in writing before you sign the lease, because every license in this guide is issued for a specific address and a specific owner, and a move or a sale restarts parts of the stack.

Insurance for a Massachusetts barbershop

The Board's rules do not publish a required insurance amount for a barbershop, 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 he expects in the lease, and a shop built on razor work should carry professional liability for the services themselves, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for chairs, tools and retail stock. If other barbers work inside your shop under your premises license, your policy and theirs should both name the arrangement, because the shop license holder is the name attached to the premises when the Board or an injured client comes asking.

Your Massachusetts renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering: training hours, application fees and the PSI theory exam
• Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering: barbershop license application, $130 fee and inspection checklist
• Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering: renewal fees and renewal schedule
• M.G.L. c.112, section 87H: barber registration, apprenticeship routes and shop inspection
• M.G.L. c.112, section 87T: definitions and the scope of barbering
• M.G.L. c.149, section 148B: the employee classification test
• Secretary of the Commonwealth, Corporations Division: limited liability company information and annual reports
• Business certificates (DBA) in Massachusetts: filing with the city or town clerk
• Department of Revenue, 830 CMR 64H.1.1: sales tax treatment of service enterprises
• Department of Revenue AP 616: registration for sales tax and withholding through MassTaxConnect
• M.G.L. c.151A, section 14: unemployment contribution rates and the $15,000 taxable wage base

Massachusetts barbershop FAQ