What counts as verified
A jurisdiction earns a row in the table only when both halves check out against an official page: the licensing body and the license it issues, from the board’s own site or the official state code; and the sales-tax permit and the agency that issues it, from the revenue department’s own site. A row’s Source column links to exactly those pages, and the quotes on the page were verified verbatim against the official source.
Where the board’s site does not mention a separate retail license, the cell says so rather than inferring a rule — the one exception is California, where the state’s official business guide enumerates the full requirement list, so the cell says no. We did not guess a fee, a license name, or a board name for any jurisdiction.
Source types
Official state pages come first: the cosmetology board or licensing agency for the salon side, the revenue department for the sales-tax side. Where the board’s page does not state the rule, the row cites the official statute or code instead — Mississippi’s legislature statute §73-7-17, Utah Code §58-11a-301, Wyoming Title 39 §39-15-106(a), and the District of Columbia’s DCMR Title 17 §3716.3, among others.
We did not rely on secondary guides, law-firm explainers, or aggregator pages for any row. Several jurisdictions were left out of the first rounds because only third-party sources surfaced, and they were added only once an official page confirmed both halves.
What the table found
52 of 52 jurisdictions are verified: all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In 49 of the 52, the salon or shop license comes from the state cosmetology board. The three exceptions are Connecticut, where the premises are licensed by the local health district while the state licenses the practitioners; Utah, which has no state-level salon license at all — its Cosmetology Act licenses practitioners and schools only; and Puerto Rico, where the board licenses individual practitioners only — Reglamento 8663 governs the exam and the individual license, with no salon or shop license in the regulation.
Three states have no sales tax at all, so there is no sales-tax permit to get: Oregon, Delaware, and New Hampshire. Alaska has no state sales tax, but local sales tax and registration may apply: the Department of Revenue confirms the state levies no sales tax while local jurisdictions may, and sellers register through the Alaska Remote Seller Sales Tax Commission or directly with the local jurisdiction. Montana has no state sales tax, but a local resort tax of up to 3% may apply to retail sales inside a designated resort community or area — Whitefish, for example, collects its 3% resort tax from retail. And no verified state publishes a separate retail-sales license for skincare sold inside a licensed salon — the table cannot tell you what one costs or how to apply for one because, on the official pages we read, it does not exist. Medical services in a med spa are governed separately by the state medical board; Illinois states the split in writing, in the joint memo from its cosmetology regulator and its Department of Public Health.
Puerto Rico verified
Puerto Rico is verified — the 52nd and last jurisdiction, completing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico (52 jurisdictions). The Junta Examinadora de Especialistas en Belleza (Department of State) licenses individual practitioners only: Ley 431 and its regulation, Reglamento 8663, govern the exam and the individual license, and the regulation contains no article on salons, shops, or premises — so there is no board-issued salon or shop license. Puerto Rico is the third jurisdiction with no salon license, after Connecticut and Utah. The sales-tax half is the Certificado de Registro de Comerciantes (IVU), issued through SURI by the Department of Hacienda. Sources: the board page, Reglamento 8663 (Department of Estado regulation registry), and the Hacienda merchant-registration page.
How the table was built
The table was built in verification rounds between 31 October and 2 November 2026, working alphabetically through the jurisdictions and skipping entries that could not be verified, then returning to them. The count moved from 33 verified to 38, 43, 48, and all 50 states, then the District of Columbia, then Puerto Rico — 52 of 52. West Virginia’s row notes that the state has no separate sales-tax permit: its Business Registration Certificate is the single registration. South Dakota’s cosmetology commission still exists — the 2025 bill to merge it was tabled.
Rechecks and corrections
Every row is rechecked monthly (automated where the source allows, manual otherwise), and the verified date is updated when a rule changes. Rules do change, so confirm the current requirements on the official page before you act. If you spot an error, write in through the contact page and say which jurisdiction and which figure. Verified corrections are fixed and the page’s verified date is changed.