How to Start a Nail Salon in New Hampshire

Who regulates nail salons in New Hampshire

Nail licensing sits with the Board of Barbering, Cosmetology, and Esthetics inside the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, under chapter 313-A of the Revised Statutes. The executive director of OPLC issues the licenses and sets the fees by rule under RSA 310:5, priced to recover up to 125 percent of the office's operating costs; the manicurist's fee schedule is at Plc 1002.07, and the term framework is RSA 310:8, two years from the date of issuance, superseding any different term in the chapter itself. The boundary lines are at RSA 313-A:9: practicing manicuring for pay without a license is a class A misdemeanor for a natural person and a felony for any other person, a shop not at all times under the direct supervision and management of a licensee commits a misdemeanor, and so does employing or allowing an unlicensed person to practice. For a nail salon, that last line is the operational one: every person at a table, employee or renter, holds a current license the owner has verified.

The rest of the stack belongs to the general agencies. 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, the build-out, ventilation expectations in practice, and the sign. The shop license and the local approvals run in parallel, and neither substitutes for the other.

New Hampshire nail salon at a glance

The manicurist license, step by step

The manicurist license at RSA 313-A:12 has two doors, and they are priced in time very differently. The school door is a course of at least 300 hours in an approved school, followed by the examination whose scope and content the board sets and which OPLC holds at least once every six months under RSA 313-A:15. The apprenticeship door is training as a salon apprentice that the board deems equivalent to that course, and the board's rules put the number on it: 600 hours, double the classroom route. A salon deciding whether to train its own nail technicians should do that arithmetic first, because the apprentice route costs twice the hours to reach the same license, and the apprentice cannot take paying customers until 50 hours are complete under the board's rules, the earliest threshold in the chapter. Every apprentice registers with OPLC and holds the apprentice certificate, $50 under Plc 1002.07, before training begins, on proof of age 16 or older and good professional character under RSA 313-A:24, and a shop carries no more than one apprentice per licensed professional.

The license itself costs $50 for two years, the same fee the chapter charges a cosmetologist or barber, on initial issue, renewal or reinstatement alike. An applicant eligible for the examination who has not yet passed it can work under the temporary permit at RSA 313-A:18, practicing under the guidance of a licensed practitioner in a registered salon, the permit fee credited as the examination fee, with a second 60 day permit available after a failed attempt. Once licensed, the manicurist displays the license conspicuously near the work station under RSA 313-A:17 and renews on the two year cycle RSA 310:8 runs from the license's own issue date, with OPLC notifying at least two months before expiration and no practice permitted on an expired license.

The staffing overlap deserves its own paragraph because it changes hiring. The esthetics definition at RSA 313-A:1 VIII does more than skin work: it reaches pedicure and manicure services expressly. A licensed esthetician in New Hampshire may therefore perform nail services inside her license, which means a nail salon attached to a spa, or a salon whose esthetician wants table hours between facials, is staffed lawfully without a second credential. The manicurist license remains the purpose-built route and by far the shortest path for a dedicated nail technician, but the definition is why a New Hampshire salon's roster can mix the two licenses at the same tables. What neither license does is reach beyond nails and skin: chemical hair services stay with the cosmetologist and master barber definitions, and eyelash application is named in the cosmetology and esthetics definitions, not the manicurist's.

The shop license for your nail 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, covers any business location where barbering, cosmetology or esthetics is practiced, and manicuring sits inside the chapter the shop license serves. The application names the owner and the shop's address, the license is conspicuously posted, and a licensed practitioner who applies receives it if the shop meets the board's rules, including passing an inspection. The fee is $100 for two years plus a $100 inspection fee on the initial application, under Plc 1002.07. Sanitary inspections follow at initial licensure and biannually thereafter under RSA 313-A:21 II, unless the shop holds the one-time OSHA certificate of ten or more hours in health, safety, disinfection and sanitation that RSA 313-A:19 V offers, or a board-approved equivalent; investigation inspections remain possible at any time.

Ownership and movement follow the chapter's two standing provisions. A person who does not practice may hold the shop license under RSA 313-A:19 IV if the shop meets every requirement and a licensed cosmetologist, barber, manicurist or esthetician is employed as manager; the paragraph does not authorize the owner to practice. A change of location is a transfer of licensure under RSA 313-A:19 III, issued for the new location if it meets the requirements, so a salon moving across town files rather than reapplies from zero. For a nail salon the inspection posture deserves a sentence of its own: disinfection, instrument handling and product storage are the substance of the sanitary inspection, and the shop that builds its cleaning log around the inspection cycle, rather than around the inspector's arrival, is the one for whom biannual visits are a formality.

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 its formation document is a Certificate of Formation, Form LLC-1, not articles of organization. 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 under RSA 304-C:194: $100, filed between January 1 and April 1 each year, the first report due in the year after formation, an LLC formed between December 1 and April 1 excused from that year's report, and a $50 late filing fee under RSA 304-C:191 II(f) after April 1. 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 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 it effective on filing for a five year term; section 349:7 prices it at $50, with renewals at $50 and a $10 fee for a notice of discontinuance, addition or withdrawal; and section 349:8 has the Secretary of State forward a renewal notice at least six months before the term expires. The registration is separate from forming the LLC, whose name is fixed in the Certificate of Formation. A salon that will sign, bank and book under a different name registers that name first, so the shop application, the bank account and the storefront carry the same words.

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 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 spelling on the shop application and every account that follows. Because New Hampshire does not tax wages, there is no state withholding account to open alongside the federal number.

No sales tax, and the two business taxes instead

New Hampshire has no general sales tax, and for a nail salon the absence covers the whole ticket: the manicure, the pedicure and the bottle of polish a client buys at the desk all ring up with no tax added, and no city or town levies one underneath. The state's claim on the business arrives through two Department of Revenue Administration taxes. The Business Profits Tax, RSA 77-A, takes 7.5 percent of taxable business profits, with a return required only when 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, with a filing threshold of $281,000 of gross receipts or of tax base on the same vintage. Both thresholds are adjusted biennially, BET paid is a credit against BPT with unused credit carried forward ten taxable periods, and every filer also submits Form BT-SUMMARY with the return itself, 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.

The practical reading for a nail salon is that a small shop files neither return in its early years, and the one to watch as it grows is the enterprise tax, because a salon's base is dominated by what it pays its technicians. Keep services and retail in separate point of sale categories anyway: the split costs nothing in a no-sales-tax state and becomes the record the business tax filings, and any future change in the law, will ask for.

Renting a nail table in New Hampshire

New Hampshire once licensed the rented booth itself, under a paragraph of RSA 313-A:19 that treated an independently operated booth much like a small establishment. HB 409, the 2023 OPLC overhaul, repealed it. A table renter today needs her own current personal license, a manicurist or esthetician license displayed at her station under RSA 313-A:17, and she works inside the host salon's shop license. There is no renter's application and no premises fee of her own. The remnant that confuses owners is in the fee rule: Plc 1002.07 still prints a booth rental license at $75 for two years plus a $100 initial inspection fee, a line that prices a license the statute no longer contains. Do not pay it, and do not charge a renter for it.

Classification follows conduct. A renter who sets her own prices, keeps her own book and collects her own money runs her own business inside licensed premises, with her own EIN, her own trade name registration if she trades under a name, and her own position under the business tax thresholds. A technician whose schedule, prices and products the salon controls is an employee, with unemployment tax and workers' compensation attached. Either way the shop's statutory duties hold: the premises stay under the direct supervision and management of a licensee, and allowing an unlicensed person to practice is a misdemeanor under RSA 313-A:9, so the owner verifies every renter's license before the first client and keeps the written agreement with the license copies.

Hiring nail technicians: wages, unemployment and workers' comp

The wage floor is the federal one. RSA 279 ties New Hampshire's minimum wage to the federal rate, and the Department of Labor's minimum wage page states the rule directly: no employer may pay less than $7.25 an hour. Overtime runs at time and one half beyond forty hours in a week, tipped employees are paid at 45 percent of the applicable minimum wage by the employer with tips making up the rest, and wages are paid weekly or every two weeks under the state's wage payment law. Percentage and commission pay for employees still has to clear the floor across the hours worked, which is the calculation a busy salon runs every pay period rather than once at hiring.

Register with New Hampshire Employment Security when you hire your first employee, file the Employer Status Report that opens the unemployment account, and report new hires to the same agency. Unemployment tax is fully employer paid, starting at a 2.7 percent new employer rate on the first $14,000 of wages per employee under the U.S. Department of Labor's state table, experience-rated afterward, with trust fund solvency adjustments capable of lowering the effective rate. There is no state income tax on wages, so there is no state withholding to run. Workers' compensation insurance is a statutory duty for New Hampshire employers under RSA 281-A, and a registered apprentice is an employee for these purposes from the first training day.

The local layer: towns, zoning and premises

The state licenses the technicians and the shop; your city or town decides whether a nail salon may exist at your address. New Hampshire issues no general state business license beyond the licenses in this guide, and land use, building permits, signage and occupancy run through the municipality under its zoning ordinance and the state building and fire codes as locally enforced. A nail salon is a commercial use, and the parcel has to allow it before the lease is signed. Nail salons draw two practical local questions more than other beauty formats: ventilation for chemical services, which landlords and building officials both ask about, and water and septic capacity for pedicure stations outside the sewer districts. The shop license adds a state premises review with sanitary inspections at opening and biannually. Confirm zoning and the building's capacity with the town first, because tables, plumbing and ventilation are sunk costs by the time a local problem surfaces.

Insurance for a New Hampshire nail salon

No provision of chapter 313-A sets a liability insurance minimum for a manicurist or a shop, so the coverage stack is a lease and judgment question, with one statutory exception: workers' compensation, which RSA 281-A makes an employer duty. A landlord will typically set general liability limits in the lease and require evidence annually; the build-out, pedicure thrones, dryers and retail inventory argue for property coverage; and professional liability belongs in the same conversation, because the nail trade's standard claims, infections and chemical reactions, are service claims rather than premises claims. In a table-rental salon, each renter running her own business should carry her own professional coverage, named in the written agreement, since her clients are her business even though the premises license is the salon's. This guide quotes no premium benchmarks; a broker pricing your actual menu and town 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 nail salon FAQ