How to Start a Hair Salon in New Hampshire

Who regulates hair salons in New Hampshire

The licensing office is the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, OPLC, the umbrella agency the legislature built to hold the state's professional boards. Inside it, the Board of Barbering, Cosmetology, and Esthetics advises on the salon trades under chapter 313-A of the Revised Statutes Annotated: barbers, master barbers, cosmetologists, manicurists, estheticians, instructors, apprentices, shops and schools. The executive director of OPLC issues the licenses and sets the fees by rule; RSA 310:5 prices those fees to recover up to 125 percent of the office's operating expenses, which is why the fee schedule lives in the administrative rules at Plc 1002.07 rather than in the statute. The framework statute, RSA 310:8, supplies the term: licenses are valid for two years from the date of issuance, and its terms supersede anything different printed in a board's own chapter.

Section 313-A:9 draws the boundary an owner has to respect. Practicing cosmetology for pay without a license is a class A misdemeanor for a natural person and a felony for any other person, which means the salon entity itself carries the heavier exposure. Operating a shop that is not at all times under the direct supervision and management of a licensee is a misdemeanor, and employing or allowing an unlicensed person to practice is a misdemeanor. The rest of the setup sits outside OPLC: the Secretary of State's Corporation Division takes the LLC, the annual report and trade names; the Department of Revenue Administration runs the two business taxes; New Hampshire Employment Security runs unemployment insurance; the Department of Labor runs wages and workers' compensation; and your city or town controls zoning and the building.

New Hampshire hair salon at a glance

The cosmetologist license, step by step

The cosmetologist is the salon's core credential, and its definition at RSA 313-A:1 VI is broad: it reaches hair work and, expressly, applying makeup or eyelashes, which is why a New Hampshire cosmetologist can staff a lash service that other states fence off behind a specialty license. The training route has two doors. The school door is 1,200 hours in an approved school of cosmetology under RSA 313-A:11. Read that figure carefully against older material: the statute required 1,500 hours until the 2025 amendment, effective August 9, 2025, cut it to 1,200, and republications and roundups printing 1,500 are describing the repealed requirement. The apprenticeship door is 3,000 hours over at least 18 months under a licensed cosmetologist who has practiced in New Hampshire for at least two years. The apprenticeship did not shrink when the school hours did, so it now runs two and a half times the classroom route, a real factor in whether a salon trains its own or hires school graduates.

Either route ends the same way: an examination whose scope and content the board sets, held by OPLC at least once every six months under RSA 313-A:15, and the personal license itself at $50 for two years under the fee rule at Plc 1002.07, the same $50 charged for a barber, master barber, esthetician or manicurist license, on initial issue, renewal or reinstatement alike. An applicant who is eligible to sit the examination but has not yet passed it has a bridge: RSA 313-A:18 lets OPLC issue a temporary permit to work under the guidance of a licensed practitioner in a registered salon, with the permit fee credited as the examination fee, and a second permit, expiring 60 days from issuance, after a failed attempt. Once licensed, the stylist displays the license in a conspicuous place adjacent to or near the work station, as RSA 313-A:17 requires, and renews on the two year cycle RSA 310:8 runs from the license's own issue date, with OPLC sending notice at least two months before expiration.

The apprenticeship is a regulated status, not a handshake. RSA 313-A:24 requires registration with OPLC and an apprentice certificate before training begins, on proof of age 16 or older, the fee, and good professional character, and it caps the ratio at one apprentice per licensed professional in a salon, with licensed barbers and master barbers allowed two. The board's rules pace when an apprentice may take paying customers: a cosmetology or master barbering apprentice waits until at least three months and 400 hours are complete, a barbering or esthetics apprentice until 150 hours, and a manicuring apprentice until 50 hours.

The shop license for your salon

The premises license is the shop license under RSA 313-A:19, and operating a shop without one is a misdemeanor. The definition behind it, RSA 313-A:1 XIII-a, is wide: a shop is a barbershop, a mobile barbershop, a salon, and any other business location where barbering, cosmetology or esthetics is practiced in New Hampshire, so the license follows the work rather than the storefront format. The application names the owner and the shop's address, the license is conspicuously posted, and any licensed barber, cosmetologist, manicurist or esthetician who applies receives the license if the shop meets the board's rules, including passing an inspection. The fee is $100 for two years, with a further $100 inspection fee on the initial application, both set in Plc 1002.07. When the salon moves, RSA 313-A:19 III provides for a transfer of licensure to the new location if it meets the requirements: the license follows the business through a filing, not automatically with the lease.

Two provisions shape how owners structure the purchase. The first is the manager rule. Under RSA 313-A:19 IV, a person who does not practice may hold the shop license if the shop meets every requirement, the fee is paid, and a licensed cosmetologist, barber, manicurist or esthetician is employed as manager; the paragraph is explicit that it does not authorize the owner to practice. An investor, a spouse, or a parent company can therefore own a New Hampshire salon outright, provided a licensee actually manages it. The second is the inspection rhythm. RSA 313-A:21 II requires sanitary inspections at initial licensure and biannually thereafter, unless the shop has obtained the one-time OSHA certificate of ten or more hours in health, safety, disinfection and sanitation, or a board-approved equivalent, that RSA 313-A:19 V offers; investigations can still bring an inspector through the door at any time. Earning the certificate early is the cheapest inspection relief in the chapter.

Forming your business: the LLC

Entity filings run through the Corporation Division of the Secretary of State, online through NH QuickStart. The limited liability company is the default vehicle, and New Hampshire's formation document has its own name: not articles of organization but a Certificate of Formation, Form LLC-1. RSA 304-C:191 II(c) sets the filing fee at $100, flat. The company's name must contain "Limited Liability Company" or "LLC" or a similar abbreviation under RSA 304-C:32, and the filing names a registered agent with a New Hampshire address. The recurring obligation is the annual report: RSA 304-C:194 requires it every year, the fee is $100, and the window is fixed on the calendar rather than on your formation anniversary, January 1 through April 1, with the first report due in the year after formation and an LLC formed between December 1 and April 1 excused from that year's report. Miss April 1 and RSA 304-C:191 II(f) adds a $50 late filing fee. File the Certificate of Formation before the shop application, because the shop filing names the owner the state already has on record.

Registering your salon name

A New Hampshire trade name is a state registration, filed with the Secretary of State under RSA chapter 349. Section 349:5 requires anyone conducting business under a trade name, firm or style other than their own legal name to file a registration certificate; section 349:6 makes the registration effective on filing for a term of five years; and section 349:7 sets the fee at $50, with renewals at $50 and a $10 fee for a notice of discontinuance, addition or withdrawal. Section 349:8 adds the detail owners miss in other states: the Secretary of State forwards a renewal notice at least six months before the registration expires, and reregistration is required at the end of the term. The registration records your claim to the name; it is separate from forming the LLC, whose own name is fixed in the Certificate of Formation, and it is the filing to make when the sign, the booking page and the bank account will carry a name different from the entity's. Sequence it before the shop application if the shop will file under the trade name, so the names on the two filings match.

Getting your EIN

The Employer Identification Number is the federal tax identity the rest of the stack hangs on. It is free from the IRS, issued through the IRS online application, and no legitimate service charges for it. The salon needs the number before it registers as an employer with New Hampshire Employment Security and before payroll can run under the entity's name. Apply in the LLC's exact registered name, keep the confirmation letter with the entity records, and use the same name spelling on the shop application, the trade name registration if you file one, and every tax account that follows. New Hampshire adds a small mercy here: because the state does not tax wages, there is no state withholding account to open alongside the federal one.

No sales tax, and the two business taxes instead

New Hampshire's tax signature is an absence. The state has no general sales tax, so the haircut, the color service and the bottle of shampoo a client takes home all ring up with no tax added, and no city or town levies one underneath. A salon opening from a sales tax state should still build its price book deliberately: the margin that a tax state sends to the revenue department stays in the till here, and the state's claim on the business arrives through two Department of Revenue Administration taxes instead. The Business Profits Tax, RSA 77-A, takes 7.5 percent of taxable business profits, and a business files a return only when its gross business income from all activities passes the filing threshold, $103,000 for taxable periods beginning on or after January 1, 2023. The Business Enterprise Tax, RSA 77-E, takes 0.55 percent of the enterprise value tax base, the sum of compensation, interest and dividends the business pays, and its filing threshold is $281,000 of gross receipts or of tax base on the same vintage. Both thresholds are adjusted biennially.

The interaction between the two is the planning point. BET is measured on what the salon pays out, so a payroll-heavy salon can owe BET in a thin-profit year; BPT is measured on profit. The statute softens the overlap: BET paid is a credit against BPT, and unused credit carries forward ten taxable periods. Every business that files either return also files Form BT-SUMMARY, and the return itself is Form NH-1040 for a proprietorship, NH-1065 for a partnership or NH-1120 for a corporation, due in the spring following the tax year, April 15 for calendar-year proprietorships and corporations. A salon under both thresholds files nothing with the department, which is why the honest advice is to model the thresholds against your second and third year projections, not your opening month: the year the salon crosses $103,000 of gross income is the year the spring filing joins the calendar.

Booth rent and chair rental in New Hampshire

New Hampshire used to license the booth itself. Until 2023, RSA 313-A:19 carried a paragraph under which an independently operated booth was licensed much like a small establishment, with a carve-out from the sink and shampoo bowl requirements. HB 409, the 2023 OPLC overhaul, removed it, and the booth rental license no longer exists. A renter today needs exactly one credential, her own current personal license, displayed at her work station under RSA 313-A:17, and she works inside the host salon's shop license. There is no renter's application, no separate inspection of her chair, and no premises fee of her own. One vestige causes real confusion: the current fee rule, Plc 1002.07, still prints a booth rental license at $75 for two years plus a $100 initial inspection fee. The line survived in the fee table after the license left the statute; it prices a license OPLC cannot issue, and neither a renter nor a landlord should pay or collect it.

What remains is classification, and it runs on conduct. A renter who sets her own prices, books her own clients, collects her own money and pays a fixed rent is running her own business inside licensed premises; she carries her own EIN, her own trade name registration if she trades under a name, and her own position under the business tax thresholds. A stylist whose schedule, prices and service menu the salon sets is an employee whatever the agreement calls her, with unemployment tax and workers' compensation following. The host's exposure is statutory, not just contractual: the shop must be under the direct supervision and management of a licensee at all times, and employing or allowing an unlicensed person to practice is a misdemeanor under RSA 313-A:9, so the owner verifies every renter's license status before the first client and keeps the written agreement, the rent terms and the license copies together.

Hiring stylists: wages, unemployment and workers' comp

The wage floor is the federal one. RSA 279 ties New Hampshire's minimum wage to the rate set in federal law, and the Department of Labor's minimum wage page states it plainly: no employer may pay less than the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. The same framework carries overtime at time and one half beyond forty hours in a week, and tipped employees are paid at 45 percent of the applicable minimum wage by the employer, with tips making up the rest. Wages are paid weekly or every two weeks under New Hampshire's wage payment law. Apprentices sit inside this system rather than beside it: an apprentice is registered with OPLC before training, and the hours she works are employment, paid like any other trainee's.

When you hire your first employee, register with New Hampshire Employment Security and file the Employer Status Report that opens the unemployment insurance account, and report new hires to the same agency. Unemployment tax is fully employer paid: new employers start at a 2.7 percent rate on the first $14,000 of wages paid to each employee, per the U.S. Department of Labor's state table, and the rate is experience-rated from there, with solvency adjustments capable of lowering it. Two New Hampshire simplifications follow. There is no state income tax on wages, so there is no state withholding to calculate, deposit or reconcile. And workers' compensation is not optional: New Hampshire employers must carry workers' compensation insurance for their employees under RSA 281-A, so the policy belongs in the opening budget.

The local layer: towns, zoning and premises

The state licenses the people and the shop; your city or town decides whether a salon may exist at your address. New Hampshire has no general state business license beyond the licenses in this guide, and no statewide municipal license either: land use, building permits, signage and occupancy run through the town or city where the salon sits, under its zoning ordinance and the state building and fire codes as locally enforced. A hair salon is a commercial use, and the parcel has to allow it before the lease is signed. The state layer adds its own premises review on top: the shop license application is an inspection-gated filing, sanitary inspections follow at initial licensure and biannually, and the license names the address it was issued for. Neither approval substitutes for the other. Confirm zoning with the municipality first, in writing where the town offers it, because build-out, plumbing and signage are sunk costs by the time a zoning problem surfaces.

Insurance for a New Hampshire salon

No provision of chapter 313-A sets a liability insurance minimum for a cosmetologist or a shop, which makes the coverage stack a lease and judgment question rather than a licensing one, with one statutory exception: workers' compensation, which RSA 281-A makes an employer duty rather than a choice. The landlord leasing salon space will set the practical floor, typically general liability limits the tenant must carry and evidence each year, and a multi-chair build-out adds property coverage for chairs, dryers, plumbing and retail inventory. Professional liability for chemical services belongs in the same conversation, because color and chemical injury claims are the salon trade's standard loss pattern, and a booth renter model adds one more check: each renter running her own business inside your shop license should carry her own professional coverage, named in the written agreement, since her clients are her business even though the premises license is yours. This guide quotes no premium benchmarks; a broker quoting your actual menu is the only reliable source.

Renewal and filing calendar

The licenses run on their own two year clocks; the entity report and the tax filings run on the spring calendar underneath them.

Official sources

• Office of Professional Licensure and Certification: Board of Barbering, Cosmetology, and Esthetics, the board for RSA chapter 313-A
• NH Administrative Rules, Plc 1002.07: the $50 personal license, the $100 shop license and inspection fees, and the remaining $75 booth rental line
• RSA 310:8: two year license terms from issuance, renewal and lapse rules for OPLC licenses
• RSA chapter 304-C: the LLC Certificate of Formation and the annual report
• New Hampshire Secretary of State: Corporation Division, NH QuickStart and trade name registration
• Department of Revenue Administration: Business Profits Tax and Business Enterprise Tax rates and filing thresholds
• Department of Labor: minimum wage under RSA 279, overtime and tipped wages
• IRS: apply for an Employer Identification Number online, free

New Hampshire hair salon FAQ