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Forming an LLC for Your West Virginia Hair Salon: The Complete Filing Guide

The parent guide gives you the short version: file Form LLD-1, pay $100, file a $25 report every June 30. This page is the long version: how the West Virginia LLC compares with running the salon in your own name, what each filing actually does, the accounts that come with it, and the two year window that can save the company if a report ever slips.

Researched from West Virginia 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 West Virginia salon

The sole proprietorship is West Virginia's default: open the salon in your own name and the state asks for no formation filing at all. It does not ask for nothing, though. The business still needs the $30 business registration certificate from the Tax Division, the board's salon license still needs a licensee running the shop, and if the storefront name is not your own legal name, the trade name registration described below is yours to file. What the sole proprietorship never gives you is separation: the salon's debts, its slip and fall claim, and its lease are the owner's personal obligations, and the owner's house and savings stand behind them.

The LLC exists to build that separation for a $100 filing. A limited liability company is its own legal person: it holds the lease, employs the stylists, owes the suppliers, and answers the claims the business generates, while the owners' personal assets stand outside, so long as the separation is maintained in fact and not just on paper. Two limits on that protection deserve plain statement. The shield covers the business's obligations; it does not cover your own hands, and a stylist remains personally answerable for an injury her own work causes a client. And the shield depends on the separation staying real, which is why the bank account section below is part of the formation decision and not an afterthought. The corporation is the third route, and for a salon it is mostly machinery without a payoff: West Virginia corporations carry their own formation and governance weight, and the salons on this site overwhelmingly organize as LLCs. Whichever entity you choose, the board's rules do not change: the salon license, the licensed manager, and the booth rental registrations work the same way, and the parent guide covers them.

Filing the Articles of Organization: Form LLD-1

Formation is a single form and a single fee, filed through the state's own portal. The steps:

1. Choose a name the Secretary of State will accept. The name must be distinguishable from names already on the state's records, and you can search the Secretary of State's business organization database before you file. If the name matters and the salon is not ready to open, a name reservation holds it for 120 days for $15.
2. File Form LLD-1, the Articles of Organization, and pay $100. The fee is set in the Secretary of State's fee schedule at section 59-1-2(a)(1)(C), and the filing runs through the WV One Stop Business Portal. The portal can carry the filings that surround formation in the same flow: the Tax Division business registration and the WorkForce West Virginia employer registration, which is the practical reason to file there rather than by paper.
3. Keep the record current. Changes to the articles are filed as amendments at $25 each, and the annual report carries the company's addresses and the name of the person to whom legal process may be sent. The Secretary of State's records are where the state, a process server, and a lender's title search look first, so a stale address is a real operational risk, not a clerical detail.
4. Expect the annual report from the first year. Formation starts a clock that runs for the life of the company: a $25 report due every June 30, covered in the calendar section below.

The trade name: registering your salon's public name

An LLC is often formed under one name and traded under another: the articles say one thing, the sign, the booking page and the gift cards say something shorter. West Virginia handles that gap with a trade name registration under chapter 47, article 8 of the code, filed with the Secretary of State. The pricing splits by who files: registration is free for an individual, and $25 for an LLC, corporation or other registered entity, the fee the schedule at section 59-1-2(a)(1)(K) sets for a domestic business entity. The name has to be distinguishable from names already in use, and the registration is what connects your public name to your legal entity in the state's records, which is the connection a bank, a landlord and a payment processor will look for when the names on your documents do not match.

Two confusions are worth clearing up, because both cost owners a second filing. First, the trade name registration is not the business registration certificate: the certificate, below, is the Tax Division's registration of the business itself, while the trade name filing only registers a name. A salon whose LLC name and storefront name match needs the certificate and no trade name; a salon trading under a different name needs both. Second, booth renters are separate businesses for this purpose too: a renter working under her own brand registers her own trade name, free as an individual, rather than sheltering under the salon's.

Your EIN from the IRS

The Employer Identification Number is the federal tax identity for the company, issued free by the IRS. A salon LLC needs one even as a single member company the moment it hires anyone, and in practice it needs one at formation regardless: the business bank account opens under the EIN, payroll and withholding accounts key off it, and suppliers and marketplaces ask for it on their vendor forms. Apply on the IRS site and nowhere else; the number itself costs nothing, and any site charging for the application is selling a free government form. Get it after the articles are filed, because the application asks for the entity's exact legal name and formation date as the Secretary of State recorded them.

West Virginia tax and employer accounts

The business registration certificate is the Tax Division's founding document for the business: $30 per fixed business location, required under section 11-12-3 before the business operates, and permanent for registrations issued on or after July 1, 2010, with no renewal to calendar. The employer withholding account rides on the same registration, so one filing opens both the sales tax side and the payroll side of the Tax Division relationship. What can put the certificate at risk is not age but delinquency elsewhere in the system, a point the reinstatement section below returns to.

On sales tax, West Virginia runs a consumers sales and service tax with a shape salon owners routinely misread. The state rate is 6 percent, and municipalities may add 1 percent where they impose it. But the tax does not reach the service ticket: personal services are exempt per se under the Tax Division's rules, and Publication TSD-300 lists barbering and hairstyling among them. What the salon does collect tax on is retail: the products on the shelf are taxable sales. And the salon pays tax in the other direction on the supplies and equipment it consumes in rendering services, because the state treats the provider as the consumer of what it uses. Returns ride on Form WV/CST-200CU through the MyTaxes portal. Price your retail shelf and your supply orders with that split in mind, because it decides which receipts carry tax and which purchases already have it baked in.

The employer account sits with WorkForce West Virginia. Liability attaches after $1,500 or more in gross wages in a calendar quarter, or one or more employees in 20 different weeks, or federal FUTA liability. A new employer pays 2.7 percent for its first 36 months, on the first $9,500 of each employee's wages, and files quarterly reports due April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31. New hires are reported within 14 days, a duty that also reaches independent contractor engagements of $2,500 or more a year, which is how a salon's booth renters can enter the reporting system even though they are not employees. The state minimum wage is $8.75. Underneath all of it sits a local layer owners forget: many cities and towns levy their own business and occupation, or privilege, tax under section 8-13-5, on top of the state taxes, and the parent guide's local section is where that belongs on your opening checklist.

The business bank account, and keeping the separation real

The LLC's liability protection is only as strong as the line between the company's money and yours. Open a business account in the company's legal name under its EIN, run every dollar of salon revenue through it, pay every salon bill from it, and pay yourself on a schedule you can describe: a draw or a salary, not whichever card is in your hand. Booth rent makes this concrete in a salon. Rent from your chairs is company income when the LLC holds the lease, so renters pay the company, not your personal account, and the deposits become the paper trail that proves the separation if a claim ever tests it. Mixed funds are the classic way owners hand a claimant the argument that the LLC was never really separate. The formation cost $100; keeping the protection costs only the discipline of one account used properly.

Closing or reviving a West Virginia LLC: dissolution and reinstatement

Closing a company you no longer need is a filing, not a disappearance. The voluntary route ends with Articles of Termination, $25 under the fee schedule at section 59-1-2(a)(1)(Q), after the company has wound up its affairs. One workers compensation wrinkle from the insurance side of this site can hold the door: under section 23-2-5a, the Secretary of State must withhold a certificate of dissolution or withdrawal from an employer with unpaid compensation amounts until the Insurance Commissioner confirms payment, so a salon that ever ran payroll should expect its comp account to be squared away before the state closes the file.

The involuntary route runs the other way, and it starts with the annual report. When the report is more than 30 days delinquent, the Secretary of State reports the entity to the Tax Commissioner, who may suspend, cancel or withhold the business registration certificate the salon trades under. If the delinquency continues, section 31B-8-809 gives the grounds for administrative dissolution: failing to deliver the annual or biennial report within 60 days after it is due, failing to pay fees, taxes or penalties within 60 days after they are due, or being in default with the Bureau of Employment Programs. An administratively dissolved LLC is not a dead one, but it is a company that has lost its authority to carry on business beyond winding up, and every month dissolved is a month lenders, landlords and the board can see on the public record.

Reinstatement is generous on time and strict on paperwork. Section 31B-8-809 allows the company to apply within two years after the dissolution takes effect, on Form LLD-10, the Secretary of State's Application for Reinstatement. The money is arithmetic: a $25 reinstatement application fee, $25 for each missing annual report including the current year, and a $50 late fee for each missing year. The attachment that decides whether the application is even read is a Letter of Good Standing from the State Tax Division, requested through MyTaxes on form GSR-01, reciting that all taxes owed by the company have been paid; the form warns that an application without the letter will be rejected and returned as incomplete. The signed annual report goes in with it. File the tax clearance first, because it is the piece outside your control, and the two year clock does not pause while you wait for it.

Your West Virginia LLC annual duties calendar

Just as useful is what West Virginia does not put on this calendar. The business registration certificate never renews: it is permanent for registrations issued on or after July 1, 2010, so there is no annual Tax Division fee to remember for the certificate itself. Practitioner licenses renew without continuing education hours. And there is exactly one entity level report to the state each year, the $25 Secretary of State report, which is precisely why missing it is so conspicuous: it is the single thread the whole standing of the company hangs from, and the reinstatement arithmetic above is what a $25 oversight grows into.

This page is general information researched from official West Virginia 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 West Virginia?

The Articles of Organization, Form LLD-1, cost $100 under the Secretary of State fee schedule at section 59-1-2, filed through the WV One Stop Business Portal. The company then carries a $25 annual report, a one time $30 business registration certificate per fixed location, and its board licenses on top of the formation cost.

Does a West Virginia LLC file an annual report?

Yes. The report costs $25 and is due on or before June 30 each year; paying after the deadline adds a $50 late fee, for $75 in total. After five consecutive on time reports, amendments effective July 1, 2026 let an LLC in good standing elect biennial reporting instead.

Where do I register a trade name for a West Virginia salon?

With the Secretary of State, under chapter 47, article 8 of the code. Registration is free for an individual and $25 for an LLC, corporation or other registered entity, and the name must be distinguishable from names already in use. It is a separate filing from the $30 business registration certificate, which does a different job.

Does the West Virginia business registration certificate renew?

No. The certificate costs $30 per fixed business location under section 11-12-3, and registrations issued on or after July 1, 2010 are permanent, with no renewal. What can endanger it is delinquency elsewhere: an annual report more than 30 days late is reported to the Tax Commissioner, who may suspend, cancel or withhold the certificate.

How do I reinstate a dissolved West Virginia LLC?

Within two years of an administrative dissolution, file Form LLD-10 with the Secretary of State: a $25 reinstatement fee, $25 for each missing annual report, and a $50 late fee for each missing year, with the signed annual report attached and a Letter of Good Standing from the State Tax Division, requested through MyTaxes on form GSR-01. Without that tax letter, the application is rejected as incomplete.