How to Start a Hair Salon in Missouri

Who licenses hair salons in Missouri

Hair salons answer to the Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners, a combined board inside the Division of Professional Registration that licenses cosmetologists, barbers, estheticians and manicurists under Chapter 329 of the Revised Statutes, with the board's rules at 20 CSR 2085. Missouri does not issue one general beauty license. Section 329.010 divides cosmetology into classified occupations: Class CA, hairdressing and manicuring together; Class CH, hairdressing; Class MO, manicuring; and Class E, esthetics. Each class carries its own written scope, its own training route and its own license, and the board licenses establishments, schools and instructors alongside the operators. Applications and renewals run online through a MOPRO account, the state's licensing portal, and the board's paper forms make the same point: anything with a fee or a notary goes by mail, everything else goes through MOPRO.

The board licenses two different things that new owners constantly merge into one. The cosmetologist license belongs to the person: it proves she finished her training hours and passed the examinations. The establishment license belongs to the location: section 329.045 requires every cosmetology establishment to be licensed, and the definition in section 329.010 reaches that part of any building where the classified occupations are practiced, including space rented inside a building. A salon needs both layers before the first paying client, and every license in the building can be checked through the division's license lookup before you let anyone behind a chair.

Missouri hair salon at a glance

The cosmetologist license, step by step

Start with school. Section 329.050 sets the cosmetologist's training at 1,500 hours in a licensed school, or 1,220 hours if the training is taken in a public vocational technical school. The statute also keeps the apprenticeship door open: 3,000 hours working as an apprentice under supervision substitutes for the school route. One detail from section 329.040 shapes the first months of either route: a cosmetology student must complete at least 160 hours of classroom instruction before working on the public, so the early part of the course is theory, sanitation and technique off the floor. Whichever route you take, the hours belong to the classified occupation, and the full service license that covers both hair and nails is Class CA, hairdressing and manicuring.

Examinations come next, and Missouri outsources them. Licensing exams are administered through Prov, the board's exam vendor, with registration handled through MOPRO. The board's candidate bulletin prices the written examination at $90 and the practical examination at $60, paid to Prov rather than to the board. Read the board's own fee rule with that in mind: 20 CSR 2085-3.010 lists renewal at $60, reinstatement at $90, reciprocity at $100 and an inactive status fee of $30 for operators, but it lists no separate application fee line for a first Missouri operator license, and the board's Licensure Notification form, the form a passing candidate returns, shows fee lines for barbers, instructors and crossover licenses and none for a new Class CA license. The money a new cosmetologist pays the state side of the table is the exam money; the license itself renews at $60 a cycle.

The renewal is where Missouri gets strict. Under 20 CSR 2085-4.010, all barber and cosmetology licenses and registrations renew biennially and expire on September 30 of each odd numbered year, no matter when in the cycle the license issued. The cosmetologist renewal rule adds the teeth: a renewal application postmarked after September 30 is returned, and the licensee has to reinstate instead. Reinstatement inside two years of the renewal date costs $90 under the fee rule, priced as the renewal plus late charges, and a license expired beyond the reinstatement window goes back through examination territory under section 329.120. If you trained in another state, the reciprocity route charges $100 and an exam score endorsement costs $100; an instructor license, if you also teach, is $30 with a $60 renewal. All board fees are nonrefundable.

The cosmetology establishment license and your premises

The salon itself is licensed as a cosmetology establishment under section 329.045, and the statute is plain that every establishment must hold one. The fee rule at 20 CSR 2085-3.010 prices the license at $100 for an establishment with up to and including three operators, and $10 for each additional operator, so a four chair salon pays $110 and a ten chair salon pays $170 at application. The same $100 covers both the full service form and the rental station form of the license, which is the detail the salon suite guide builds on. Renewal is $75 every two years, reinstatement after a lapse is $105 including the late fee, and opening an unregistered establishment draws a $100 delinquent fee on top of the application. The license is posted in plain view where clients and inspectors can see it, as section 329.045 requires.

The license is tied to the owner and the address in ways that punish improvisation. Section 329.045 requires a new license within 45 days when an establishment changes ownership or location, and the fee rule prices those events: a change of location costs $100 for a full service establishment, a change of ownership costs $100, and adding a co-owner costs $50. A buyer of your salon does not inherit your establishment license; she applies for her own inside that 45 day window. The same logic applies to a move across the street. Budget the refiling into any purchase or relocation rather than discovering it at the first inspection.

One point surprises many first-time owners: the establishment license holder does not have to be a cosmetologist. Investors and non-stylist owners open Missouri salons legally. What the state requires is that the establishment is licensed and that every person providing services holds her own license in the right class. If you plan to work behind the chair yourself, you need the Class CA license too, and if your menu includes services in another class, the person performing them needs that class: manicuring sits in Class MO and in Class CA, esthetics sits in Class E, and no cosmetology license of any class reaches microblading, which belongs to the tattoo office covered in that guide.

Forming your business entity

Most Missouri beauty businesses form as an LLC, and Missouri prices the form at the bottom of the national range. The Articles of Organization, Form LLC 1, are filed with the Secretary of State's Corporations Division under Chapter 347 and cost $50 filed online or $105 on paper, per the Secretary of State's published fee schedule; the difference is steep enough that paper filing is simply a donation. The filing names your registered agent and office, and electronic payments carry a small convenience fee the state does not keep. An optional name reservation holds a name for $25, and a certificate of good standing costs $10 when a landlord or lender asks for one.

The reporting position is the part owners get wrong by importing habits from other states. A Missouri LLC files no annual report with the Secretary of State: the Secretary of State's own business FAQ answers the question in one word, no, and Chapter 347 contains no such filing. The annual registration report belongs to corporations under sections 351.120 and 351.122, due in the corporation's incorporation month at $20 filed online or $45 on paper when timely. So an LLC salon's recurring Secretary of State bill is zero, and the calendar item that replaces the annual report in Missouri is the fictitious name renewal below. None of these filings replaces the licenses above: the Secretary of State registers your entity, and the board licenses your people and your premises, and the two systems do not talk to each other.

Business names and the fictitious name registration

Missouri calls its trade name filing a registration of fictitious name, and it lives with the Secretary of State under Chapter 417 for every kind of business, sole proprietors included. If your salon trades under any name other than the legal name of you or your entity, you register that name with the Secretary of State for $7; the fee schedule prices creation, renewal, correction and amendment at the same $7, and cancellation is free. Section 417.210 asks for the registration within five days of first using the name, which makes it an opening week filing rather than an opening month one. The registration runs five years, and the renewal, another $7, must be filed within the six months before the five years run out; a renewal filed inside that window runs from the old expiration date, so filing early costs you nothing.

Two practical points follow. The fictitious name registration is a public notice filing, not a license, not a trademark and not a name reservation; it does not stop anyone else from using the name, which is what the $25 name reservation and federal trademark registration are for. And the name on the registration, the name on the establishment license application and the name on your signage should tell one consistent story, because clients, inspectors and your bank all 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 complete the state registrations described below, which key on the federal number. A single member LLC can technically operate on the owner's Social Security number for some federal purposes, but the salon's bank account, card processing and 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. The Department of Revenue registrations, the quarterly unemployment wage reports and the biennial license renewals all assume the business can show its own books, and a clean account is the cheapest compliance tool in this guide.

Sales tax through the Department of Revenue

Missouri taxes retail sales, and the Department of Revenue draws the line that matters at a salon register. The tax falls on retail sales of tangible personal property and on the specific services the statutes name; the Department's registration guidance names telephone service and fees paid into places of amusement, including fitness centers, as taxable services. Haircutting, coloring, styling and the rest of the service menu are not named, so you do not collect sales tax on service receipts. Product is different: shampoo, styling products and anything else a client takes home is a retail sale of tangible personal property, taxed at the combined state and local rate for your address, which the Department publishes in rate tables by location. Itemize services and products separately at checkout and the tax follows the product lines only.

Any business making retail sales needs a Missouri retail sales license before its first sale, and the Department is blunt about the order of operations. Registration runs through the Department's online system or on Form 2643, the Missouri Tax Registration Application, and the same form opens your employer withholding account when you hire. The Department's business registration FAQ prices the mistake of selling first and registering later: a penalty of $500 for the first day of unlicensed selling and $100 for each day after, up to $10,000, under section 144.118, and operating without the license is a misdemeanor. Register before the doors open, post the license at the business, and file returns on the frequency the Department assigns your account.

Booth rent and rental stations in Missouri

Missouri answers the booth rent licensing question differently from most states, and the answer is written into the establishment fee rule. Section 329.010 defines a cosmetology establishment to include any space rented within a building, and 20 CSR 2085-3.010 prices a Rental Station establishment license alongside the full service license: $100 to open, $75 to renew, $50 to move it to a new location. A stylist who rents a station as her own business is therefore holding two licenses, her operator license and an establishment license for the station. That is the structure the salon suite guide prices out in full, and it is the reason a Missouri chair rental is never just a handshake and a key.

Renting inside someone else's licensed salon works the other way. There, the salon's establishment license is the premises license, priced to cover the first three operators with $10 charged for each additional one, and a renter working as part of that establishment is counted inside it. What decides which model you are in is the substance of the arrangement: whose establishment the space is, who controls the client relationship, the prices and the hours. The licensing answer is also only half the question. Whether a renter is an independent contractor or your employee for tax and unemployment purposes is answered under the control based tests the IRS and the Division of Employment Security apply to the actual arrangement, and a written rental agreement is evidence, not a verdict. Paper a real tenancy like a tenancy: a lease, a set rent that does not float with her service revenue, her own fictitious name registration and her own tax accounts.

Hiring employees in Missouri

Your first hire registers you as an employer in two places. The Department of Revenue takes your withholding registration on the same Form 2643 that opens the sales tax account, covering state income tax withholding from wages. The Division of Employment Security, in the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, runs the unemployment insurance account: liable employers report wages and pay contributions quarterly, and the Division is explicit that no part of the tax may be deducted from a worker's pay. A new employer pays the new employer rate for its classification for its first two or three years, and the Division's published table puts the 2026 rate for most new employers at 2.376 percent. The tax applies to the first $9,000 of each employee's wages per year, the 2026 taxable wage base, which caps the new employer cost at about $214 per employee per year before you move onto experience rates that run from 0.0 percent to 6.0 percent on your own claims history.

The wage floor is the other number to build into your prices. Missouri's minimum wage for 2026 is $15.00 an hour under section 290.502, well above the federal $7.25. Tipped employees must be paid at least half the minimum wage in cash, $7.50 an hour, and if tips plus the cash wage fall short of $15.00, the business makes up the difference. Overtime runs at one and one half times the regular rate past 40 hours in a week, and the summary poster the Division of Labor Standards publishes has to be posted where employees can read it. One exemption matters to very small shops: the state rate does not apply to a retail or service business with annual gross sales under $500,000, although federal law may still set a floor for a given worker. Price your services against the $15.00 reality, not the federal number out of state guides quote.

Local rules for a Missouri hair salon

The local layer sits underneath the state licenses and can still stop a launch. Your city controls zoning, and a salon has to be a permitted use at the address you choose; confirm that with the city before you sign the lease, and ask what the build out will require. Cities and counties across Missouri issue their own business licenses and occupancy permits, and the larger metros layer their own tax registrations and inspections on top, with fees and sequences that differ enough between a Kansas City storefront, a St. Louis shop and a small town main street that no state guide can price them for you. Signage, parking and occupancy limits live at that level too.

Get the zoning answer and the inspection sequence in writing before the lease is signed. Every state license in this guide is issued for a specific address, an establishment move triggers a new license filing inside 45 days, and the establishment application fee is spent whether the space works out or not. The cheapest week in the whole project is the one spent confirming that the space can legally be a salon before any application goes in.

Insurance for a Missouri hair salon

The board publishes no required insurance amount for a cosmetology establishment, 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 business working on clients should carry professional liability for the services themselves, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for equipment and retail stock. If other licensees work under your establishment license, both policies should name the arrangement: the establishment holder is who the board and an injured client find first.

Your Missouri renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners: board home, applications, renewals and MOPRO licensing
• Section 329.010, RSMo: classified occupations of cosmetology, scopes and the establishment definition
• 20 CSR 2085-3.010: board fee rule, operator, establishment and rental station fees
• 20 CSR 2085-4.010: renewal dates, September 30 of each odd numbered year
• Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners: Licensure Notification form MO 375-1177, post examination fee lines
• Secretary of State, Corporations Division: schedule of fees and charges, LLC, corporation and fictitious name filings
• Department of Revenue: business tax registration requirements, retail sales license and withholding
• Department of Revenue: business tax registration FAQs, including the unlicensed selling penalty under section 144.118
• Division of Employment Security: unemployment tax rates, the new employer rate table and the taxable wage base
• Department of Labor and Industrial Relations: Missouri minimum wage and tipped employee rules

Missouri hair salon FAQ