What permits do you need to open a salon or barber in Denver?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 11 records listed for a salon or barber in Denver, CO, 6 apply to every business of this type and 5 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

Of the 6 that always apply, 3 carry a flat fee, coming to $94.75. That is a floor, not a total. 3 of the 11 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 1 has no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Sign Permit: $25 for a standard sign permit; $500 for a comprehensive sign plan at a large facility (no fee for a supplemental/vital-signs comprehensive plan); outdoor advertising (billboards) is $225 for the initial review and $225 for the annual renewal.

Commercial Building Permit: Valuation-based: $20 ($1–$500); $35 ($501–$2,000); $35 + $8 per additional $1,000 ($2,000–$25,000); $220 + $8/$1,000 ($25,000–$50,000); $420 + $7/$1,000 ($50,001–$100,000); $770 + $5.60/$1,000 ($100,001–$500,000); $3,010 + $4.75/$1,000 ($500,001–$1,000,000); $5,385 + $3.65/$1,000 above $1,000,000. Plan review is 50% of the permit fee generally (10% for type-approved permits; 20%, minimum $100, for express/over-the-counter review); a 25% or 50% surcharge applies for two-phase or three-plus-phase construction.

Sales Tax Licence: $16 falling to $4 depending on where in the two-year cycle you apply, plus a refundable $50 deposit on a first location; $16 per location to renew

Permits for a salon or barber in Denver, CO come from 5 separate offices: City and County of Denver, Community Planning and Development, City and County of Denver, Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, Colorado Secretary of State, Business Division, Colorado Department of Revenue, Taxation Division, Colorado Office of Barber and Cosmetology Licensure, Division of Professions and Occupations. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City and County of Denver, Community Planning and DevelopmentIssues 3 permits on this page: Sign Permit, Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, Commercial Building Permitwww.denvergov.org/DSfees
• City and County of Denver, Department of Licensing and Consumer ProtectionIssues 2 permits on this page: Sales/Use/Lodger's Tax Licence, Occupational Privilege Taxdenvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Business-Licensing
• Colorado Secretary of State, Business DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Periodic Report, General Business Licence (local, not state)1700 Broadway, Suite 550, Denver, CO 80290 · (303) 894-2200www.coloradosos.gov/pubs/business/businessHome.html
• Colorado Department of Revenue, Taxation DivisionIssues 1 permit on this page: Sales Tax Licence1375 Sherman Street, Denver, CO 80261 · (303) 238-7378tax.colorado.gov/sales-tax-account-license
• Colorado Office of Barber and Cosmetology Licensure, Division of Professions and OccupationsIssues 1 permit on this page: Shop and Salon Registration1560 Broadway, Suite 1350, Denver, CO 80202 · (303) 894-7800dpo.colorado.gov/BarberCosmetology

Confirmed directly from the current fee schedule page.

This document is dated 2019; a secondary source claims Denver no longer charges a fee for this registration, but that claim could not be independently confirmed against any primary source. The $50 figure from the official Tax Guide is used here, flagged for manual re-verification.

A Denver-specific payroll tax, distinct from any state tax, triggered once an employee earns at least $500 in a calendar month working in the city.

A standard Certificate of Occupancy carries no separate fee — it is issued as part of the building permit's final inspection. A duplicate/reissued certificate shows two conflicting official figures: $10 on the live DSfees page versus $25 in the dated ADMIN 125/138 PDF; not reconciled.

Confirmed identically across two independent official sources (the live DSfees page and the dated ADMIN 125/138 PDF).

$50, and formation is online only — there is no paper option for an LLC or a corporation at all. Colorado genuinely did charge a dollar for a time: a 2022 fee-relief act funded a credit from a general fund transfer, and the Secretary of State's own announcement said the fee would return to $50 once the money was exhausted, which it has. Anything quoting $1 is describing a programme that has ended. A corporation costs the same $50, and so does a nonprofit. Expedited service costs $150 and applies only to paper filings, which these are not.

The same $50 as an LLC, with no share-based component, so Colorado gives no filing-cost reason to prefer either structure. Amending the articles later costs $25 and dissolving $10. A corporation sole is the one exception that must be filed on paper, at $125.

The fee went from $10 to $25 on 1 July 2024, having sat at $10 since online filing began in 2006, so older guidance understates it by more than half. The window is generous — two months either side of your periodic report month, penalty-free — and the escalation after that is worth knowing: miss the due date and the entity becomes noncompliant, miss the further two-month window and it becomes delinquent, at which point curing costs $100. A delinquent entity's name is released for anyone else to use on the four hundred and first day. Filing must be electronic.

No fee, because Colorado issues no general business licence — and the evidence is unusually clean, because the phrase appears in Colorado statute only to describe something a local taxing jurisdiction issues. A 2022 act forbids such a jurisdiction to charge a general business licence fee to a retailer that holds a state retail licence and has no more than incidental physical presence there, and from 2023 forbids requiring a separate application from that retailer at all. So the state legislated about the local licence without ever creating a state one. The Secretary of State directs you to the regulatory agencies department for industry licences and to your city or county for the rest.

The fee is prorated to what is left of the cycle, so the same licence costs $16 in the first half of an even year, $12 in the second, $8 in the first half of an odd year and $4 in the second. On top of that a first location posts a $50 deposit, refunded automatically once the business has remitted $50 of state sales tax — so opening a first location today costs $62 rather than $12. Renewal is a flat $16 per physical location and every licence expired together on 31 December 2025, the current period running to the end of 2027. The important limit is geographic: the department administers state tax and the local taxes it collects on behalf of most jurisdictions, but a number of home-rule cities administer, license and audit their own, and a business physically located in one needs that city's licence as well as this one. Mobile vendors must tell the department every jurisdiction they sell in, home-rule ones included.

Thirty-five dollars covers a fixed establishment, a temporary one, a mobile unit or a school, and one registration covers whichever services are ticked — barbering, cosmetology, esthetics or manicuring — with no separate booth registration. The registration attaches to the physical location, so there is no reciprocity from another state and a change of ownership needs a fresh application at the full fee. The owner need not hold a practitioner licence. Colorado merged its barber and cosmetology regulation into a single office under a director rather than a board. One caveat on the renewal figure: the regulatory agencies department publishes no current fee schedule at all — the $26 is the last officially published amount, from the state's own 2025 sunset review, and predates the November 2025 renewal cycle.