How to Start a Barbershop in Minnesota

Who registers barbershops in Minnesota

Barbershops answer to the Board of Barber Examiners under Minnesota Statutes chapter 154 and Minnesota Rules chapter 2100. The Board registers barbers, barber instructors, barber schools and barber shops, runs its own written and practical examinations on a published schedule, and inspects shops. Its vocabulary is the first thing to get right: Minnesota barbers hold a certificate of registration as a registered barber, and the shop holds a shop registration card. Nothing in the barber system runs through the Board of Cosmetology, and none of the cosmetology structures in the other guides, the salon license types, the Designated Licensed Salon Manager, the three year cycles, apply here.

The separation is strict in both directions. Section 154.01 makes registration mandatory to practice barbering, and a registered barber must provide barbering services only in a registered barber shop or barber school, unless the Board authorizes otherwise in advance. A cosmetologist who wants to offer barbering services needs the barber system's own route, and a barber who wants to offer the wider cosmetology menu needs a cosmetology license. Shops that employ both trades keep both registrations alive, in two systems, on two calendars.

Minnesota barbershop at a glance

The registered barber certificate, step by step

The route runs through barber school. Under chapter 154, a student completes the full 1,500 hour curriculum in a barber school approved by the Board of Barber Examiners, and that completion has a shelf life: students who finished more than four years before applying, without picking up a barber registration in any jurisdiction, owe additional schooling before they are eligible for the examination. Students work under a student permit, which costs $45. The Board schedules its written and practical examinations through the year and charges $85 for the examination and certificate of a registered barber, with a $10 fee to retake the written examination.

The certificate then runs on the shortest renewal cycle in Minnesota beauty: one year. Under section 154.15, every registered barber renews on or before December 31 each year, and a certificate not renewed during December expires on December 31. Renewal costs $80. Restoration is priced in section 154.003 at $95, and the Board's reinstatement rules add the hard edge: a registration lapsed within four years can be restored by paying the restoration fees for each lapsed year, but a registration lapsed more than four years requires the barber to retake the examination, written, oral and practical, before a certificate issues again. There is no cosmetology style birth month stagger here and no three year runway; December is everyone's deadline.

Scope is the other place the separation shows. Barbering under chapter 154 is its own practice, and the certificate authorizes barbering services, not the full cosmetology menu. A shop that wants chemical color work, nail services or skin services beyond the barber scope staffs them with cosmetology licensees under the cosmetology salon system, or sends the client elsewhere. Hiring across the line is normal in Minnesota; confusing the two systems' paperwork is the mistake.

Shop registration and your premises

The shop registers with the Board of Barber Examiners, not with the cosmetology board, and the registration is cheap and annual. Section 154.003 prices initial shop registration at $85, and renewal at $85. Shop registration cards run on their own date under section 154.15: they are renewed on or before June 30 of each year, and the Board mails courtesy renewal forms in May, while stating plainly that keeping the registration current is the shop owner's responsibility whether or not the form arrives. A lapsed shop registration costs $105 to restore, and the Board's administrative penalty statute, section 154.162, backs the paperwork with penalties for a missing or lapsed shop registration, or an unregistered barber, found on inspection; the penalty for a lapsed shop registration discovered on inspection runs up to $500 against the shop owner.

The registration is what makes the room lawful for barbering. All barbers in the shop must work in the registered shop: a registered barber may provide services only in a registered barber shop or barber school, unless the Board authorizes a different setting in advance. Registrations, the shop's and each barber's, must be displayed. Because the shop registration expires every June 30 while the barbers inside it expire every December 31, a Minnesota barbershop runs two compliance seasons a year, and the calendar section below lays them side by side so neither one sneaks up.

Ownership carries no manager structure here, which is the sharpest operational contrast with the cosmetology system. Chapter 154 requires no designated manager license for a barber shop; the registered owner answers for the shop's registration and for the registrations of the barbers working in it. Owners who also run a cosmetology salon next door, or in the same building, run the DLSM structure there and the plain registration structure here, and the two do not substitute for each other.

Forming your business entity

Most Minnesota barbershop businesses form as a limited liability company under chapter 322C of the Minnesota Statutes, and Minnesota prices the filing by channel in a way that surprises people: Articles of Organization filed by mail cost $135, while the same filing online or in person costs $155. The filing is made with the Secretary of State and takes effect when accepted. Your Articles name the LLC, its registered office and agent, and the organizer, and the name must carry a limited liability company designator.

Every Minnesota LLC then files an Annual Renewal with the Secretary of State each calendar year, due by December 31, and the renewal itself is free: the fee schedule lists it at $0. Free is not the same as optional. An LLC that skips the renewal is administratively terminated, and bringing it back costs a reinstatement fee of $65 by mail or $85 online or in person, and the Secretary of State prints one more limit on the schedule: an entity inactive for more than six years cannot be reinstated online. The December 31 renewal lands in the same month as your barber registration renewal, so one December checklist covers both.

Business names and the assumed name certificate

Minnesota's name filing is the Certificate of Assumed Name under chapter 333, and it is filed with the Secretary of State, not at a county office. Under section 333.01, no one may carry on a commercial business under a name that does not set forth the true name of every person interested in the business unless a certificate is on file, so a sole proprietor trading as a shop brand and an LLC whose storefront name differs from its legal name both file. The certificate costs $30 by mail or $50 online or in person on the Secretary of State's fee schedule, and the name on it may not borrow a designator like corporation or limited liability company unless the filer is authorized to use it.

Then comes the step Minnesota owners miss: publication. Section 333.01 requires the certificate to be published after it has been filed, in a qualified newspaper in the county in which you have your principal or registered office, for two successive issues, and section 333.02 requires the filing and the publication before you commence business under the name. The certificate also has to be kept alive: section 333.055 holds it in effect only while an annual renewal is filed in each calendar year after the filing year. The renewal is free, and an expired certificate can be reinstated at $65 by mail or $85 online. Keep the names consistent across the stack anyway: Secretary of State filings, the shop registration, the sales tax account and your signage should tell one story.

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. Minnesota keys its registrations to the federal number: the Department of Revenue issues your Minnesota tax ID when you register the business for sales tax and withholding, and your unemployment insurance employer account with the Department of Employment and Economic Development runs on the same identity.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every fee, product order, rent payment and tax deposit through it. The quarterly unemployment wage reports, sales tax returns, renewals and Board fees all assume the shop can show its own books, and a clean, separate account is the cheapest compliance tool in this guide.

Sales tax through the Department of Revenue

Minnesota taxes retail sales and a short statutory list of services, and barbering is not on the list. The Department of Revenue's Personal Services guidance states the split for this industry directly: barber shop and salon services are not taxable, including cutting, coloring, highlighting, perming, trimming and styling hair, shaving the face or neck, and shampooing and conditioning treatments. You collect no sales tax on the service ticket, full stop.

The retail shelf is the opposite. Beauty and cosmetic product sales are taxable: hair products, grooming products and anything else you sell off the shelf are retail sales at the 6.875 percent state rate plus the local taxes that apply at your address. Buy that inventory without paying tax by giving your supplier a completed Form ST3, Certificate of Exemption, claiming the resale exemption, and owe the tax only when you sell. The mirror image catches new owners: the supplies you consume while providing services, and your tools and equipment, from clippers and shears to barber chairs and towels, are taxable purchases. The shop pays tax on them because they are not resold. Register the business with the Department of Revenue for a Minnesota tax ID before your first taxable sale; the same registration opens your withholding account when you hire.

Chair rent in a Minnesota barbershop

Chair rent inside a registered shop is the simple case in the barber system. The shop registration covers the premises, so a renting barber needs no second premises filing; what the renter needs is a current certificate of registration as a registered barber, because every barber in Minnesota must work in a registered barber shop or school and must be registered personally. The shop owner's exposure runs the other way: the administrative penalty statute prices an unregistered barber found working in your shop on inspection, so verify every renter's registration, and its December 31 expiration, before the chair earns its first rent.

The boundary of the shelter is the registered shop itself. A barber who rents a room the public reaches as its own business, in a suite building or a storefront of their own, is operating a barber shop and needs their own shop registration at $85, renewed every June 30, plus their own barber registration renewed every December 31. Two registrations, two calendars, one chair. The tax classification question is separate and runs on control, not on the label in the lease: paper a real tenancy like a tenancy, with written terms, set rent, and the renter's own clients, products and booking.

Hiring employees in Minnesota

Your first hire makes you a Minnesota employer on several tracks at once. Register with the Department of Revenue for wage withholding, and with the unemployment insurance program administered by the Department of Employment and Economic Development. New employers are assigned a tax rate based on the average for their industry; for 2026 the published new employer rates run from 1 percent up to the 8.9 percent maximum, paid quarterly on each employee's wages up to the 2026 taxable wage base of $44,000. The 2026 rate stack adds a 0.40 percent base tax rate and a 14 percent additional assessment on the tax due, and the quarterly wage detail report is due whether or not any tax is owed. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same checklist for any shop with employees.

Minnesota sets its own wage floor and allows no tip credit against it. From January 1, 2026, the state minimum wage is $11.41 an hour for every employer, and tipped barbers are owed the full rate before tips. A training wage of $9.31 an hour may be paid to employees under 20 for their first 90 consecutive days of employment. Cities layer on top where they have set their own rates: Minneapolis requires $16.37 an hour in 2026 for all employers, and St. Paul phases by employer size, with small employers reaching $16.37 on July 1, 2026, so the wage floor is a property of the address where the work happens.

Local rules for a Minnesota barbershop

The local layer sits underneath every state filing in this guide. Zoning controls whether a barbershop can operate at the address you choose, and cities add occupancy approvals, sign rules and, in many places, a local business license on top of the state layer. None of those local approvals substitute for the state registrations: the shop registration is written for the shop's address, so the lease, the registration and the local permission all have to describe the same room.

Get the zoning answer in writing before the lease is signed. The shop registration belongs to the location and the owner named on it, so a change of address or ownership means dealing with the Board on a new registration rather than editing the old one, and the sales tax account has to move with you. Rent on a space the city will not clear for barbering is the most expensive mistake in this guide.

Insurance for a Minnesota barbershop

The barber chapter sets no professional liability minimum in the registration provisions, 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 a business working on the public with blades, clippers and chemical services should carry professional liability for the services themselves, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for chairs, equipment and retail stock.

One structural point follows from the registration system: because your chair renters work under your shop registration, your policy should name the arrangement, so a claim arising in a rented chair is not an argument about whose premises it happened on. Owners comparing this guide to the hair salon guide should note the difference plainly: the $25,000 per claim insurance floor is a cosmetology salon requirement under section 155A.29, and it does not attach to a barber shop registration.

Your Minnesota renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board of Barber Examiners: registered barbers, examinations and shop registration
• Board of Barber Examiners: barbershop registration renewal and the June 30 date
• Board of Barber Examiners: reinstatement after expiration and the four year rule
• Minnesota Statutes 154.15: annual renewal of barber certificates and shop cards
• Secretary of State: business filing and certification fee schedule
• Minnesota Statutes 333.01 and 333.02: the assumed name certificate and publication
• Department of Employment and Economic Development: unemployment tax rates for 2026
• Department of Labor and Industry: 2026 minimum wage, state and city rates

Minnesota barbershop FAQ