How to Start an Esthetics Business in Massachusetts

Who licenses esthetics in Massachusetts

Esthetics answers to the Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering, the combined board inside the Division of Occupational Licensure that licenses the cosmetology, barbering, manicuring, aesthetics and electrology trades under M.G.L. c.112, sections 87T to 87KK. The Board licenses two layers. The aesthetician license belongs to the person: 600 hours of training and the written theory examination. The aesthetics salon license belongs to the location: it proves the premises passed inspection as a place where aesthetics is offered. Applications and renewals run online through the Division's eLIPSE platform with a notarized CORI form in the file, and every license can be checked through the Division's lookup.

The scope deserves slow reading, because it is the whole regulatory story for this trade. Section 87T defines aesthetics as cleansing, stimulating, manipulating and beautifying of the skin using hands, mechanical or electrical apparatus or appliances, cosmetic preparations, tonics, lotions or creams, and then limits it: aesthetics only includes methods that are minimally invasive and pose a minimal risk to the public's health as defined by the Board. The Board's official policy on practices outside the scope of licensure names what falls beyond the line for its licensees, and the prohibited list includes tattooing and tattoo removal, permanent makeup and micro-blading, and injections. A Massachusetts aesthetician's menu is therefore wide at the surface and hard walled at depth: facials, waxing, lash and brow services and surface treatments inside the definition, and anything that injects, tattoos or treats past the minimally invasive line outside it, whatever the device manufacturer calls it.

Massachusetts esthetics at a glance

The aesthetician license, step by step

Start with school. The aesthetician license requires a course of at least 600 hours of professional training in an aesthetics school approved by the Board, under 240 CMR 2.01. The 600 hour figure is the standard for training completed after June 1, 2019; the Board's transfer guidance works from 300 hours for training completed before that date, which matters for experienced aestheticians relocating to Massachusetts with older credentials. When the hours are done you apply through eLIPSE, upload the notarized CORI form, and wait for Board approval to schedule the written theory examination with PSI. There is no practical examination. The application fee is $68, and an incomplete application is held open for 180 days before it is treated as abandoned.

The license expires every two years on your birthday and renews for $68, with a $57 late renewal fee. Keep it posted in the treatment room, and keep the reinstatement rule in view: under section 87GG, a license left unrenewed for more than three years returns only on a new application, the renewal fee and a practical examination. Training certificates from device companies and product brands sit on top of the license, never instead of it: a manufacturer's certification to operate a machine does not extend the statutory scope by one service, and the Board's prohibited practices policy is written to catch exactly that confusion. If a treatment you want to offer is not plainly inside the minimally invasive definition, the Board's written position is the document to get before the equipment is ordered.

The aesthetics salon license and your premises

The studio itself is licensed as an aesthetics salon, one of exactly three salon license types the Board issues, and the one its own salon forms call Type 5, aesthetics only. The application fee is $136, and the license renews every two years for $82, expiring December 31 of even years. The Board's sequence is unforgiving about order: a new business or a relocation must remain closed until it is approved for a license after inspection, with the premises fully set up first. The application package asks for an 8.5 by 11 inch floor plan with all treatment rooms, stations and square footage labeled, and the Board's salon forms require additional sinks outside the bathroom, accessible to the work areas at all times. Each owner files a 2x2 photo, a government ID and a notarized CORI form; plumbing and electrical forms go in where work was done; and the studio files a price list with gender pricing prohibited.

Two structural decisions follow from the three type system. If the studio adds manicuring but not hair, the Board requires a second license, a manicuring salon license at the same $136 and $82, because no single license below the cosmetology salon covers skin and nails together. And if the studio adds hair, the premises move up to the cosmetology salon license entirely. After opening, the license belongs to the named location and space and is not transferable: a move means a new application, layout changes run through an expansion or renovation application after town permits, and on a sale the owners notify the Board, the buyer files new, and the studio may operate for 30 days after the ownership change before the new license is required. The salon name passes a Board screen that suits this trade to police: names suggesting healing or medical benefits are prohibited, including the words healing, medical, med and clinical.

Forming your business entity

Most Massachusetts beauty businesses 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 of the original filing. Both figures are written into the LLC statute itself, M.G.L. c.156C, section 12(d). The certificate names a resident agent for service of process, with the agent's consent, and the annual report restates the certificate's information with any changes that have accumulated.

For a solo aesthetician the comparison worth running is against the sole proprietor route, which files no formation document and no annual report and holds the business in the owner's name and personal liability. The LLC buys the separate legal identity at $500 in and $500 a year, a real carrying cost against a treatment room's margins, and a dissolved LLC returns on a $100 reinstatement fee plus every owed annual report. Amending the certificate costs $100, and a resident agent or office change costs $25 on paper and nothing filed electronically. None of these filings licenses anyone: the Board licenses the aestheticians and the studio premises, the Secretary registers the entity, and the two systems do not talk to each other.

Business names and the business certificate

Massachusetts has no state level trade name filing. 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. A sole proprietor trading under a studio name files one, a partnership files one, and an LLC or corporation operating under a name different from its legal entity name files one too, after the entity is registered with the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The certificate is signed under oath, runs four years, and renews.

Each city and town sets its own fee. Boston, the labeled example for 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 for $65 every four years, in person or by mail with no online filing. Choose the name with the Board's salon naming screen in mind at the same time: the certificate records any lawful trade name, while the salon license application refuses names suggesting healing or medical benefits. Keep the certificate name, the salon license name and your signage identical, because clients, inspectors and your bank read them side by side.

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. An esthetics studio's books layer memberships, packages, deposits and retail over rent and product orders, 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 does not tax your services. The statewide sales tax rate is 6.25 percent, there is no local sales tax anywhere in the Commonwealth, and M.G.L. c.64H taxes retail sales of tangible personal property plus a short list of named services that does not include facials, waxing or any other aesthetics service. Treatment receipts carry no sales tax. The retail shelf is different: skincare lines, aftercare and any product a client takes home are taxable retail sales at 6.25 percent, and studios that sell memberships should keep the product element priced and rung separately from the service element.

The Department of Revenue's service enterprises regulation, 830 CMR 64H.1.1, names beauticians expressly and resolves the gray area at the treatment bed. Where the real object of the transaction is the service, an inconsequential transfer of product is not taxed to the client; but product bought under a resale certificate and then consumed in treatments, without a separately stated charge, becomes the studio's own sales or use tax bill. Buy treatment product as a taxable purchase and retail product under the resale certificate. Registration runs through MassTaxConnect, and DOR's AP 616 procedure has the business registered to collect before it actually opens, with the same account carrying employer withholding when you hire.

Renting a treatment room in Massachusetts

There is no booth renter license to build a rental on. The Board states on its salon application page that it no longer issues or requires booth renter or booth shop licenses, so an aesthetician renting a room inside a salon works under that salon's premises license, on her own aesthetician license. The host's license type bounds the arrangement: skin work fits an aesthetics salon or a cosmetology salon, and a rental agreement cannot stretch a premises license past its type or past the minimally invasive scope line. If you want your own name on the premises license, the route is your own space and your own aesthetics salon application, which is the salon suite model covered in that guide.

Classification law then applies its own analysis, and for rented treatment rooms it usually decides the question. Under M.G.L. c.149, section 148B, anyone performing a service for a business is presumed to be its employee unless all three statutory conditions hold: freedom from the business's 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 the business. Aesthetics services are the usual course of an esthetics studio's business, so the third condition fails in the standard rental, and the statute backs the presumption with penalties, personal liability for managing officers, and unemployment and withholding exposure. Employing aestheticians outright is the structure most Massachusetts studios land on; if you rent the room, have the arrangement reviewed against section 148B first, and keep your own business certificate and tax registrations in any structure.

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: $15.00 an hour under M.G.L. c.151, section 1, in place since January 1, 2023. Aestheticians who regularly receive tips can be paid the service rate of $6.75 an hour under section 7, only with the arrangement explained in writing, and only while tips bring each pay period up to the full $15.00, with the studio covering any shortfall. Paid family and medical leave contributions also run through your MassTaxConnect registration. Read this section together with the room rental section above: Massachusetts tests the substance of the working arrangement, not the title on the agreement.

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, a building or occupancy permit for the fit out, and fire and life safety sign offs, none of which the state board handles. The state inspection stacks on the town's work, because the salon application's plumbing and electrical forms are local sign offs that precede the Board's inspection, and treatment rooms with sinks are exactly what those forms document. An esthetics studio in a home meets the Board's home salon rules as well: separate rooms licensed for the purpose, a separate entrance from the front or immediate side of the home visible from the street, and local home business zoning on top.

Local rules are also where signage, parking and hours live, and they differ enough between a Boston storefront, a suburban plaza and a home studio 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 move restarts parts of the stack.

Insurance for a Massachusetts esthetics business

The Board's rules do not publish a required insurance amount for an aesthetics salon, 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 menu built around skin argues for professional liability written for aesthetics services specifically, including the devices you actually use, alongside general liability for the premises and property coverage for equipment and retail stock. If other practitioners work inside your studio under your premises license, your policy and theirs should both name the arrangement, because the salon license holder is the name the Board and an injured client find first.

Your Massachusetts renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering: the 600 hour aesthetician course, application fee and PSI theory exam
• 240 CMR 2.01: licensure requirements for cosmetology, aesthetics and manicuring
• M.G.L. c.112, section 87T: the definition of aesthetics and its minimally invasive limit
• Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering: salon license application, floor plan, sinks and naming rules
• Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering: renewal fees and renewal schedule
• 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, including beauticians
• 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 esthetics FAQ