How to Open a Nail Salon in Minnesota

Who licenses nail salons in Minnesota

Nail salons answer to the Board of Cosmetology under Minnesota Statutes chapter 155A and Minnesota Rules chapter 2105. The Board licenses salons in five types matched to the services offered, and a shop offering manicuring services takes the nail salon license. One precision point matters for staffing: a nail technician is a practitioner licensed to perform manicuring services, which the Board defines as cleaning, shaping, polishing and decorating nails and massaging the hands and feet. Cosmetologists are licensed for that same work as part of the broader license, so a nail salon can staff nail technicians, cosmetologists, or both, provided every practitioner is licensed for what they do.

Minnesota is a mandatory practice act state for this trade: under section 155A.29, manicuring for compensation may be offered only by a licensee working in a licensed salon. The fee schedule, penalties and expiration dates live in section 155A.25, and they are the same for every salon type: an expired salon found on inspection draws up to $500, and a practitioner working on an expired license draws up to $200. Nail services performed in an unlicensed space, a home without a licensed salon, a booth inside a non salon business, are outside the system entirely, whatever license the tech holds.

Minnesota nail salon at a glance

The nail technician license, step by step

The route is short and exact. Rule 2105.0145 requires you to be at least 17 and to complete 350 hours of clinical instruction and theoretical training at a Minnesota licensed cosmetology school, documented by a course completion certificate signed by the school manager or owner. You then pass three board approved tests, a general theory test, a written practical test, and a test on Minnesota laws and rules, with passing results no more than one year old at application. Training completed more than five years before you apply needs a current skills course certificate in addition to the hours.

The license costs $195 for the first three years, a $155 license fee plus a $40 application fee under section 155A.25, and it expires on the last day of your birth month in the year it falls due. Renewal costs $115 and requires continuing education under section 155A.271: four core hours, one hour of Minnesota laws and rules and three hours of health, safety and infection control, plus a separate four hour professional practice course, for 8 hours per cycle. Late renewal of a practitioner license costs a $45 fee, and working on an expired license, discovered on inspection, carries a penalty of up to $200, so the birth month date belongs on the shop's calendar and not just the tech's phone.

Scope discipline is the staffing point. The nail technician license covers manicuring only. A tech who wants to offer facials needs the esthetician license at 600 hours, and one who wants lashes needs either an esthetician or cosmetology license above them, or the separate eyelash technician route covered in the lash studio guide in this cluster. Cosmetologists, by contrast, need no nail license on top of their own. Menu decisions and license decisions are the same decision in a Minnesota nail salon: price the service only after you confirm someone on the roster is licensed to perform it.

The nail salon license and the designated manager

The nail salon license takes the same route as every Minnesota salon license. Section 155A.29 requires the license before services are offered, and the initial nail salon license costs $350, a $250 license fee plus a $100 application fee, with renewal at $225. The cycle is three years, expiring on the last day of the month of initial licensure. The statute's conditions of licensure apply in full: compliance with local and state infection control, health and safety law; appointment of a manager; evidence of workers compensation compliance where it applies; and evidence of continued professional liability insurance of at least $25,000 per claim and $50,000 per policy year for each practitioner.

The manager is the Designated Licensed Salon Manager, registered with the Board on the salon license application under a notarized acknowledgment. The general rule is a DLSM licensed at the salon's own level, and for nail salons there is a second door: the Board's application states that a cosmetology salon manager may serve as the DLSM of a nail salon. A nail technician salon manager qualifies on her own level as well. When a salon holds both nail and esthetician licenses, the Board allows a DLSM per license or a single cosmetologist salon manager covering both, which is how a combined nail and skin shop can run under one manager. The DLSM and the owner share responsibility for the salon at all times, including for independent contractors working in it, and if the DLSM leaves, the Board gets written notice within 10 business days and a replacement DLSM within 60 days.

The manager license itself is earned on top of the practitioner license: an active nail technician or cosmetologist operator license, plus passing salon manager test results no more than a year old, at the same $195 initial fee and $145 renewal as every salon manager license in the state. A solo owner operator solves the structure by taking the manager license and registering herself as her own DLSM, the pattern most small Minnesota nail salons use.

Forming your business entity

Most Minnesota nail salon 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. Put the renewal on the same December calendar as your own year end close, and it never becomes a reinstatement.

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 salon 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 salon license, 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 salon 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 nail services are not on the list. The Department of Revenue's Personal Services guidance lists manicures and pedicures among the spa services that are not taxable, treated the same way as facials and body wraps. You collect no sales tax on the service ticket, whether the appointment is a basic manicure, a gel set or a pedicure with add on treatments.

The retail shelf is the opposite. Beauty and cosmetic product sales are taxable: polish, nail care products and anything else you sell for home use 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 matters more in a nail salon than in most shops: the products you consume providing services, polish, remover, files, cotton and gels used at the station, and your tools and equipment, are taxable purchases because they are not resold. The Department of Revenue's guidance names cosmetics, cotton, nail polish and remover, and shampoo used while providing services as items taxable to the business. Register for a Minnesota tax ID before your first taxable sale; the same registration opens your withholding account when you hire.

Station rent in a Minnesota nail salon

Station rent runs inside the nail salon license rather than beside it. A tech renting a station in your salon works in a licensed salon, so no second salon license attaches to the station and the renter files no premises paperwork of their own. What they need is their own active nail technician or cosmetologist license, displayed in the salon. Your side of the arrangement is defined by Rule 2105.0390: the owner and the DLSM must ensure that all practitioners, including nonemployees, comply with chapter 155A and the rules while working in the salon, and the salon keeps the work time records of each licensed practitioner working there, on the premises, as section 177.30 requires.

The limits of that shelter decide when a station stops being a station. A renter whose operation the public experiences as its own salon, separate space, separate door, separate booking, is running a salon in Minnesota's structure and needs its own salon license and its own designated manager, which is the subject of the salon suite guide in this cluster. 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, and for a licensed salon it is a licensing document as well: section 155A.29 asks for evidence of compliance with the workers compensation law where it applies.

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 nail technicians 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 nail salon

The local layer sits underneath every state filing in this guide. Zoning controls whether a nail salon 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. Two state rules shape the site search itself: a salon may not be located in a room used for residential purposes, and a salon in the practitioner's residence must be completely partitioned off from the living quarters, under section 155A.29. A mobile salon is possible but carries its own conditions, a permanent business address and advance notice to the Board of its locations and schedule of operation.

Get the zoning answer in writing before the lease is signed. The salon license belongs to the location and the owner named on the application, so a change of address or ownership means a new application rather than an edit, and the sales tax account, the insurance evidence and the DLSM registration all have to describe the same room. Rent on a space the city will not clear for salon use is the most expensive mistake in this guide.

Insurance for a Minnesota nail salon

Minnesota writes an insurance floor into the salon license itself. Section 155A.29 makes evidence of continued professional liability insurance a condition of the salon license: at least $25,000 for each claim and $50,000 total coverage for each policy year, for each practitioner. That floor covers everyone working under the license, employees and station renters alike, which is one more reason the salon's policy and its roster of practitioners need to match on paper.

Treat the statutory floor as a floor, not a target. Acrylic and gel chemistry, drills and files at speed, and water around pedicure stations are the everyday risks professional liability is priced for, and most landlords will name higher limits in the lease than the statute names. General liability for the premises and property coverage for stations, equipment and retail stock complete the standard stack.

Your Minnesota renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board of Cosmetology: licensing, salon applications and license lookup
• Minnesota Rules 2105.0145: nail technician training hours, tests and requirements
• Minnesota Statutes 155A.25: license fees, penalties and expiration dates
• Minnesota Statutes 155A.29: salon licensing conditions, insurance floor and mobile salons
• Minnesota Statutes 155A.271: continuing education, 4 core hours plus 4 practice hours
• Board of Cosmetology: salon license application and the DLSM acknowledgment
• 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 nail salon FAQ