Home / New Jersey / Hair Salon / LLC

Forming an LLC for Your New Jersey Hair Salon: The DORES Filings, the NJ-REG, and the Annual Report

A New Jersey salon LLC takes two filings with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, not one. The Certificate of Formation creates the LLC for $100. Form NJ-REG then registers the business for its tax and employer duties, and completing those two filings is what lets you obtain a Business Registration Certificate. One filing keeps the LLC alive afterward: a $75 annual report due on the last day of your formation month. This page walks the sequence in the order the Division itself prescribes.

Researched from New Jersey state sources. Our guides are free. We may earn a commission when you use a partner service, at no additional cost to you.

LLC, sole proprietorship, or corporation for a New Jersey salon

Most New Jersey salon owners form an LLC for one reason: separation. A properly kept LLC stands between the business's debts and claims and the owner's personal assets, so a lease dispute or a slip and fall claim is fought with the business, not with the owner's house. Know what the shield does not cover. It does not cover your own hands, so a stylist-owner's own service claim follows the stylist. It does not cover debts you personally guarantee, which includes most salon leases and loans. And it does not cover taxes you are personally responsible for collecting and handing over.

Two New Jersey specifics shape the choice. First, the registry itself: New Jersey business entities are filed with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, called DORES, inside the Department of the Treasury, not with a secretary of state's corporations division. Every filing on this page runs through DORES. Second, the entity choice changes your workers compensation wording: as our New Jersey salon insurance page explains, a corporation's working officers count as employees the Division requires coverage for, while LLC members do not trip the mandate by themselves. A sole proprietorship skips the formation filing and the $75 annual report entirely, but it also skips the separation, and its owner files a county trade name instead of a state alternate name. Whatever you choose, the entity is not the license: the shop still needs its Board shop license and its experienced practicing licensee, covered in the parent guide.

Filing the Certificate of Formation with DORES

DORES publishes the sequence on its Getting Registered page, and the order matters: verify the name, obtain the EIN, file the certificate, then file the NJ-REG. An entity must have its legal authority in place, meaning the formation filed, before it submits the NJ-REG.

1. Verify the name and give it an LLC designator. Run your chosen name through the Division's free online Business Name Search to confirm it is available before you file anything under it. The name on the certificate is the legal name everything else keys off: the shop license, the bank account, the lease.
2. Line up a registered agent with a New Jersey street address. New Jersey's LLC act requires every LLC to maintain a registered agent and a registered office in the state, and the office must be a street address, not a post office box. The agent is where legal papers get delivered, so pick someone who will actually be there.
3. Get the EIN. DORES puts the employer identification number before the filings: all LLCs obtain one from the IRS, and it is free. The next section covers it.
4. File the Certificate of Formation and pay the $100 fee. The fee is $100 for all for-profit entities. Be careful with older state PDFs and third party guides that still print $125: that was the fee before the change on July 1, 2026, and the Division's current page says $100. The filing creates the entity. It does not license the salon, and it does not finish your tax setup.
5. File Form NJ-REG. This is the tax and employer registration, the second filing. It opens the state accounts covered in the tax section below, and it is the step owners most often miss because the LLC already feels formed.
6. Obtain your Business Registration Certificate. Once the two filings above are complete, DORES issues the certificate that proves your registration. Most retail salons are never asked to show it. Section five below explains the public contracting work it gates.

The alternate name and the county trade name: two different filings

New Jersey runs its doing-business-as system in two places, split by entity type. Filing entities, meaning LLCs, corporations, and limited partnerships, register an alternate name with DORES on Form C-150G. The fee is $50, the registration runs five years, and renewal is Form C-150R at $50. Sole proprietors and general partnerships never touch that form. They file a Trade Name Certificate with the county clerk in the county where the business sits, under N.J.S.A. 56:1-2: $5 to the county clerk and $5 to the Secretary of State, plus the clerk's recording charges. The parent guide's worked example, Morris County, came to $52 all in at that clerk.

A salon needs one of these filings when the name on the door differs from the legal name on the formation papers: the LLC is Garden State Glam LLC, but the signage, the booking page, and the Board shop license say The Glam Room. File the alternate name before you print the signage, because the shop license, the bank, and your payment processor will each compare names, and a mismatch reads as a different business.

Your EIN from the IRS

The employer identification number is the business's federal tax ID, and DORES builds it into the formation sequence before the state filings. It is free from the IRS, and you should never pay a third party for the number itself. You need it even as a single member LLC with no employees, because the NJ-REG, the business bank account, and every payment processor ask for it, and the moment you hire, it becomes the number your payroll reporting runs under.

New Jersey tax and employer accounts: the NJ-REG does the heavy lifting

Form NJ-REG is one registration that opens the business's state accounts at once: sales and use tax with the Division of Taxation, and the employer accounts for withholding, unemployment insurance, and disability. On the sales tax side, New Jersey taxes retail product sales at 6.625 percent, and hair services are not taxed, because the sales tax statute taxes only the services it lists. Tanning and non-prescribed massage are on that list; hair services are not. A salon that sells retail still collects tax on every product that leaves the shelf, and the NJ-REG is how it registers to do so.

On the employer side, new employers start at a combined unemployment rate of 2.8 percent plus 0.5 percent for employer disability, on the first $44,800 of each worker's wages in 2026. The quarterly rhythm is fixed: reports NJ-927 and WR-30 are due April 30, July 30, October 30, and January 30. Those rates and wage figures are the ones verified in the parent guide's tax section, which also covers minimum wage and the tipped wage rules your payroll has to follow.

The Business Registration Certificate that comes out of this registration has its own job. Under N.J.S.A. 52:32-44, all contractors and subcontractors must provide one when doing business with the State of New Jersey and other public agencies in this state, and proof of registration is also required for licensure with the Casino Control Commission. Registration itself carries no fee: the state's own contracting FAQ states there is no cost to file with the Division of Revenue. So the certificate is not a toll on forming; it is proof, pulled when you need it, that the two filings behind it were done.

The business bank account, and keeping the separation real

Open the business account in the LLC's name as soon as the certificate and EIN exist, and run every dollar of salon money through it: card settlements, product sales, booth rent from your chair and booth rental licensees. The separation you paid $100 to create is only as strong as the paper trail, and commingled accounts are the fastest way to weaken it. Keep the formation confirmation, the NJ-REG confirmation, and your annual report receipts together with the shop license file. The Board's shop application asks for the LLC papers naming every owner and each ownership percentage, so the file your bank wants and the file the Board wants are the same file.

Your New Jersey LLC annual duties calendar

The annual report is the LLC's one recurring entity filing, and it is the one that quietly kills LLCs. It costs $75 and is due on the last day of the month in which you formed the LLC, every year. Miss two consecutive reports and the LLC can be moved to the state's inactive list, which complicates banking, leasing, and licensing until the reports are filed and the entity is restored. Set the reminder for the month before, not the month of.

Just as useful is what New Jersey does not require. DORES prescribes exactly two formation filings, the certificate and the NJ-REG, and no newspaper publication step appears anywhere in its process, in contrast to New York's LLC publication rule. There is no second annual statement to a different agency and no annual franchise tax return for a standard New Jersey LLC. The annual report is the whole recurring entity duty at the state level, which is exactly why letting it lapse is such an unforced error.

This page is general information researched from official New Jersey and federal sources, not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Requirements, fees and forms change; verify the current rules with the agency or regulator linked above before you file, sign or spend.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to form an LLC in New Jersey?

The Certificate of Formation costs $100 for all for-profit entities, filed with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services. The Form NJ-REG registration that follows carries no state filing fee, and the EIN is free from the IRS. After formation, the annual report costs $75 a year. If you operate under a different name than the LLC's legal name, the alternate name filing on Form C-150G costs $50.

What is a New Jersey Business Registration Certificate, and does my salon need one?

It is the Division of Revenue's proof that your business is registered, and you can obtain one after filing your Certificate of Formation and Form NJ-REG. Under N.J.S.A. 52:32-44, contractors and subcontractors must provide one when doing business with the State of New Jersey and other public agencies in this state, and proof of registration is also required for casino licensure. It is not a general business license, and a salon that never contracts with public agencies may never be asked to show it, but the registration behind it is part of forming the business.

When is the New Jersey LLC annual report due, and what happens if it is missed?

The annual report costs $75 and is due on the last day of the month in which the LLC was formed, every year. If two consecutive annual reports are missed, the LLC can be moved to the state's inactive list, which complicates banking, leasing, and licensing until the reports are filed and the entity is restored.

Where does a New Jersey salon file its DBA?

It depends on the entity. LLCs and corporations register an alternate name with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services on Form C-150G, for $50, valid for five years and renewable on Form C-150R. Sole proprietors and general partnerships file a Trade Name Certificate with the county clerk in the county where the business sits, under N.J.S.A. 56:1-2, for $5 to the county clerk and $5 to the Secretary of State, plus the clerk's recording charges.

Does forming an LLC license my New Jersey salon?

No. The LLC is your business entity, created by the Certificate of Formation. The salon itself is licensed by the State Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling: a new full service shop filing costs $350 in the first year of the licensing cycle or $250 in the second, and the shop must employ an experienced practicing licensee, a cosmetologist hairstylist with three years of licensed experience, to generally oversee its management.