Commercial Compliance Hub

16 permits · verified 2026-09-11

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

In short

A salon or barber in Honolulu County, HI has 3 permits that apply to every business of this type, plus 13 more that depend on your premises, signage or how you are set up. City and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting charges $600 one-time — $200 non-refundable Initial Review fee plus a $400 Processing fee for the conditional use permit (minor) — general. 3 of the 16 are charged as a range or formula rather than a flat fee. Verified 2026-09-11 against the issuing agencies’ published fee schedules.

The permits at a glance

Permits required, with issuing agency, fee, renewal term and the date each record was last verified against its source
General Business License (not required by Honolulu County)only if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Customer Services, Business License SectionNo feenot applicable2026-09-11
Commercial Building Permit & Certificate of OccupancyCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and PermittingNo feeone-time, per project2026-09-11
Building Plan Review Feeonly if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting20% of the tentative Building Permit fee (itself calculated from the unpublished Table No. 18-A, based on a preliminary estimated project valuation), capped at $25,000, due upon submission of plans and specifications for review, per ROH 18-6.1(a).one-time, per project2026-09-11
Fire Plans Review Feeonly if it applies to youHonolulu Fire Department, Fire Prevention Bureau10% of the Building Permit fee, payable to the City and County of Honolulu before the building permit is issued; waived entirely where an automatic fire sprinkler system (NFPA 13, 13R, or 13D) is installed, per Fire Code Section 1.12.8, as amended.one-time, per project2026-09-11
Sign Permitonly if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting$18–$70 one-time, by estimated value of the sign work — $18.00 ($.01-$500.00), $35.00 ($500.01-$1,000.00), $70.00 ($1,000.01 and above)one-time, per sign2026-09-11
Zoning Verificationonly if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and PermittingNo feeone-time, per request2026-09-11
Conditional Use Permit (Minor) — Generalonly if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting$600 one-time — $200 non-refundable Initial Review fee plus a $400 Processing feeone-time, per application2026-09-11
Zoning Varianceonly if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting$2,400 one-time — $400 non-refundable Initial Review fee plus a $2,000 Processing feeone-time, per application2026-09-11
Special Management Area (SMA) Permit Determinationonly if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting$150 one-time, per tax map key (TMK) parcelone-time, per property2026-09-11
Salon/Barber/Cosmetology County License (not found)only if it applies to youCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Customer Services, Business License SectionNo feenot applicable2026-09-11
Articles of Incorporationonly if it applies to youHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division$51 one-time filing, including the $1 state archives feeperpetual, but an annual report is due every year2026-09-04
General Business Licence (not required by Hawaii)only if it applies to youHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration DivisionNo feenot applicable2026-09-04
Articles of Organization (LLC)only if it applies to youHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division$51 one-time filing, including the $1 state archives feeperpetual, but an annual report is due every year2026-09-04
Annual Reportonly if it applies to youHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division$15 a year on paper; a $10 late fee applies per year delinquentannual — due at the end of the calendar quarter containing the entity's own original registration date2026-09-04
General Excise Tax LicenceHawaii Department of Taxation$20 one-time registrationno expiration — remains active until closed, surrendered or revoked for abandonment2026-09-04
Beauty Shop LicenceHawaii DCCA, Professional and Vocational Licensing Division$176 on-time renewal; inactive status is $12biennial — every licence renews by 31 December of odd-numbered years, regardless of issue date2026-09-04

Fees shown as a range or formula are set that way by the issuing agency — we do not average them into a single number.

How much does it actually cost to permit a salon or barber in Honolulu County?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 16 records listed for a salon or barber in Honolulu County, HI, 3 apply to every business of this type and 13 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 3 that always apply, 2 carry a flat fee, coming to $196.00. That is a floor, not a total. 3 of the 16 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 5 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Building Plan Review Fee: 20% of the tentative Building Permit fee (itself calculated from the unpublished Table No. 18-A, based on a preliminary estimated project valuation), capped at $25,000, due upon submission of plans and specifications for review, per ROH 18-6.1(a).

Fire Plans Review Fee: 10% of the Building Permit fee, payable to the City and County of Honolulu before the building permit is issued; waived entirely where an automatic fire sprinkler system (NFPA 13, 13R, or 13D) is installed, per Fire Code Section 1.12.8, as amended.

Sign Permit: $18–$70 one-time, by estimated value of the sign work — $18.00 ($.01-$500.00), $35.00 ($500.01-$1,000.00), $70.00 ($1,000.01 and above)

Which offices issue these permits in Honolulu County?

Permits for a salon or barber in Honolulu County, HI come from 6 separate offices: City and County of Honolulu, Department of Customer Services, Business License Section, City and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting, Honolulu Fire Department, Fire Prevention Bureau, Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, Hawaii Department of Taxation, Hawaii DCCA, Professional and Vocational Licensing Division. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

  • City and County of Honolulu, Department of Customer Services, Business License SectionIssues 2 permits on this page: General Business License (not required by Honolulu County), Salon/Barber/Cosmetology County License (not found)Kapalama Driver Licensing Center, Window #17, 925 Dillingham Blvd., Honolulu, HI 96817 · (808) 768-9700www.honolulu.gov/csd/business-license
  • City and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and PermittingIssues 7 permits on this page, including Commercial Building Permit & Certificate of Occupancy, Building Plan Review Fee, Sign Permit650 South King Street, 7th Floor, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 768-8000www.honolulu.gov/dpp
  • Honolulu Fire Department, Fire Prevention BureauIssues 1 permit on this page: Fire Plans Review Fee636 South Street, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 723-7139fire.honolulu.gov/fire-code/permits
  • Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Incorporation, General Business Licence (not required by Hawaii), Articles of Organization (LLC), Annual Report335 Merchant Street, Room 201, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 586-2727cca.hawaii.gov/breg
  • Hawaii Department of TaxationIssues 1 permit on this page: General Excise Tax Licence830 Punchbowl Street, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 587-4242tax.hawaii.gov/geninfo/licensing
  • Hawaii DCCA, Professional and Vocational Licensing DivisionIssues 1 permit on this page: Beauty Shop Licence335 Merchant Street, Room 301, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 586-3000cca.hawaii.gov/pvl

Is anything about these requirements changing?

No fee applies. The Department of Customer Services' own current Business License page names the complete, fixed set of individual business licenses the City and County of Honolulu issues (Auctioneer, E-GUN, Firearms, Garbage/Refuse, Glass Recycler, Pawn Broker, Peddler, Pedicab, Pepper Spray, Scrap Dealer, Secondhand Dealer, Tear Gas/Obnoxious Substance, Used Vehicle Parts, Wrecking/Salvaging), each priced individually on the Department's own current Fee Table — none of them a general, catch-all business license, and none of them specific to any of this project's ten industries. Hawaii's General Excise Tax Licence, recorded at the state layer, remains the real universal state-level registration every business needs; this county layer adds no general license on top of it.

No fee applies to the base Building Permit figure itself, recorded here as fee: none rather than guessed at. ROH § 18-6.2, read directly, requires a fee for each building permit and 'other fees associated with the administration of the building codes' set by 'Table No. 18-A, set out at the end of this chapter' — a valuation-based fee table this project could not retrieve in any readable form: codelibrary.amlegal.com blocks direct retrieval outright, and Table No. 18-A's own appendix page could not be located among the Wayback Machine captures this project could enumerate for the surrounding chapter, even after individually confirming every neighboring section by its own document ID (see this file's Access Note). The Department's own live online Fee Calculator computes the dollar figure from this same table but only inside non-extractable client-side JavaScript. Two real, confirmed enforcement provisions survive the gap: § 18-6.2(d) triples the fee for work started before a permit is obtained, and § 18-6.2(e) allows the fee to be doubled for an applicant with a history of false statements. No separately published Certificate of Occupancy fee could be found either; it is treated as folded into this same permitting and inspection process. The genuine, confirmed Plan Review Fee and Fire Plans Review formulas layered on top of this same unconfirmed base figure are recorded as their own lines below.

Required whenever a plan or other data must be submitted for review under ROH § 18-4.2; § 18-6.1(b) exempts building permit applications for fences, retaining walls, swimming pools, driveways, or work performed for any city agency. This fee is in addition to, not instead of, the Building Permit fee itself recorded above, and is distinct from the Honolulu Fire Department's own separate 10%-of-building-permit-fee Fire Plans Review recorded below.

Charged whenever plans or specifications are submitted to the Honolulu Fire Department under the Building Code; plans are not approved until this fee is paid. It is a separate, Fire-Department-administered fee from the Department of Planning and Permitting's own 20%-of-tentative-permit-fee Plan Review Fee recorded above, and — like the Building Permit fee it is calculated from — its final dollar amount cannot be computed here because the underlying Building Permit fee table (Table No. 18-A) is not published anywhere this project could retrieve.

The fee document itself is dated 07/01/03 on its own face, but it remains the only sign-permit fee schedule linked from the Department's live current Building Permits Forms page, so this project treats it as the current figure rather than a stale one — the same 'old-dated but currently linked' pattern this project has relied on for other cities' fee schedules.

No fee applies here — none is published. The Department's own current Zoning Permits page describes this product only as a request for property zoning designations, flood zones, development standards, and use legality, 'submit request through New Zoning Permit on HNL Build' — an online portal this project could not access without an account, and unlike every other zoning permit type on the same page, no instruction PDF or fee schedule exists for it anywhere this project could find.

Required only when a proposed use is not permitted outright in its zoning district but qualifies for Minor Conditional Use approval under the Land Use Ordinance's own Master Use Table; whether a specific business needs it depends on the exact use and zoning district, which this project could not fully reproduce from the Master Use Table's own large, complex format. Doubled if the applicant is cited for taking action without first obtaining approval. This is the general packet covering every Minor CUP use except Communication Towers, Small Meeting Facilities, Child or Adult Daycare, PreK-12 Schools, and certain BMX-3 hotels, which instead follow the separate, differently priced packet recorded below.

Provides forgiveness from zoning rules where there is hardship, per Charter § 6-1517, confirmed directly on the Department's own current Zoning Permits page. Doubled if the applicant is cited for taking action without first obtaining approval, the same enforcement pattern confirmed across every DPP zoning application this project read.

Applies only to a proposed project on a property within the coastal Special Management Area, not islandwide — the Department's own current SMA Permit Determination form states directly 'There is a standard fee of $150 per tax map key' to determine whether Chapter 25's own Minor or Major SMA permitting requirements apply at all before any permits issue. This project could not find a published fee schedule for the full Minor or Major SMA permit process itself beyond this threshold determination fee, so no further SMA permit fee is asserted here.

No fee applies. The same complete CSD business-license list has no barber, beautician, or cosmetology category anywhere in it. Hawaii's own state Beauty Shop Licence (Board of Barbering and Cosmetology), recorded at the state layer at $176 on a biennial cycle, remains the real trade-specific credential; a salon's Honolulu-specific obligations are otherwise the same Commercial Building Permit and any applicable zoning or sign permits recorded elsewhere in this file.

The same $51 as an LLC, once the archives fee is included, and the same $25 expedite option.

No fee, beyond the general excise tax licence every business needs anyway. Hawaii's own business action centre, the state's front door for opening a company, treats general excise tax registration as the universal state requirement rather than pointing to any separate general business licence, and no other state page describes one.

Fifty dollars for the filing itself plus a flat $1 state archives fee tacked onto every DCCA filing, for $51 in practice. Expedited processing adds a further $25. A corporation costs the same $51 to form.

There is no single shared filing date in Hawaii — the due date is set entirely by which calendar quarter an entity originally registered in. Register in February and the report falls due every 31 March afterward; register in August and it falls due every 30 September. This has held since 2003, so it is not a recent quirk. Two figures circulate for the fee itself, $15 on the published paper fee schedule and $12.50 in more recent online-filing guidance — filing online appears to be the cheaper channel, but confirm the exact current figure at checkout before relying on either number precisely. Two straight years of non-filing is grounds for involuntary dissolution.

Twenty dollars, paid once, and this licence functions as Hawaii's substitute for a sales tax permit — the tax itself is levied on the business for the privilege of doing business here, not collected from the customer as a separate purchase tax, even though it behaves similarly at the register. Once issued, the licence and its Hawaii Tax ID stay active indefinitely with no renewal fee or cycle to track.

Barbering and cosmetology are regulated by the same board and require the same beauty shop licence, priced at $176 to renew on time — every licence shares the identical 31 December deadline in odd-numbered years no matter when it was first issued. Restoring a licence after that deadline costs $276, considerably more than renewing on time, or $112 to restore from inactive status.

Sources

Every figure above was read from one of these government pages on the date shown. Confirmed by Editorial Team.

  1. Business License — the Department of Customer Services' own current page naming the complete, fixed list of individual business licenses it issues (Auctioneer, E-GUN, Firearms, Garbage/Refuse, Glass Recycler, Pawn Broker, Peddler, Pedicab, Pepper Spray, Scrap Dealer, Secondhand Dealer, Tear Gas/Obnoxious Substance, Used Vehicle Parts, Wrecking/Salvaging), including the Peddler definition reaching 'foodstuffs'City and County of Honolulu, Department of Customer Services · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  2. Fee Table — the Department of Customer Services' own current itemized fee schedule pricing every named business license individually, including Peddler and Itinerant Vendor at $27.50/yearCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Customer Services · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  3. Revised Ordinances of Honolulu § 18-6.2, Building permit fees — the fee is set by Table No. 18-A; unpermitted work triples the fee, and a history of false statements can double itCity and County of Honolulu, republished by American Legal Publishing · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  4. Building Permit Fee Calculator — the Department's own current page stating the Plan Review Fee is 20% of the tentative Building Permit Fee (capped at $25,000) per ROH 18-6.1(a), both fees based on project valuation from Table No. 18-ACity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  5. Building Permits — the Department of Planning and Permitting's own current overview and portal page for commercial building permitsCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  6. Revised Ordinances of Honolulu § 18-6.1, Plan review fees — the plan review fee (20% of the tentative building permit fee from Table No. 18-A, capped at $25,000) and its exemptions for fences, retaining walls, swimming pools, and drivewaysCity and County of Honolulu, republished by American Legal Publishing · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  7. Permits — the Honolulu Fire Department's own current, complete, itemized fee page for every fire-code permit it issues, stating the 2021 edition of NFPA 1 (with State and County amendments) was adopted as the Fire Code of the City and County of Honolulu effective January 3, 2025, and citing the specific amended section for each permit (Place of Assembly $200/year at Section 20.1.1.1; commercial cooking equipment suppression $100 initial/$100 reinspection; Fire Plans Review at 10% of the building permit fee, waived if sprinklered, at Section 1.12.8)Honolulu Fire Department · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  8. Sign Permits fee schedule (dated 07/01/03 on its own face, still the current document linked from DPP's live Building Permits Forms page) — $18.00 ($.01-$500), $35.00 ($500.01-$1,000), $70.00 ($1,000.01+), by estimated value of workCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  9. Revised Ordinances of Honolulu, Article 3: Permits (ROH Chapter 18) — its own left-hand table of contents independently confirms the complete current chapter list, including Chapter 11 (Child Care), Chapter 20 (Fire Code), Chapter 21 (Land Use Ordinance), Chapter 25 (Special Management Areas), and Chapter 34 (Regulation of Businesses)City and County of Honolulu, republished by American Legal Publishing · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  10. Zoning Permits — the Department's own current page listing Zoning Verification, Conditional Use Permit (Minor and Major), Zoning Variance, and Zoning Adjustment, with ordinance cross-references and links to each product's current instruction packetCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  11. Conditional Use Permit (Minor), Application Instructions (for all Minor CUP uses except Communication Towers, Small Meeting Facilities, Child or Adult Daycare, PreK-12 Schools, and BMX-3 hotels) — $200 non-refundable Initial Review fee plus $400 Processing feeCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  12. Zoning Variance, Application Instructions — $400 non-refundable Initial Review fee plus $2,000 Processing feeCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  13. Special Management Area Permit Determination form — states directly 'There is a standard fee of $150 per tax map key' to determine whether ROH Chapter 25 (Special Management Area) permitting applies to a proposed projectCity and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-11
  14. Hawaii DCCA — corporation articles of incorporation fee scheduleHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-04
  15. Hawaii Business Action Center — starting a business, centred on general excise tax registrationHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-04
  16. Hawaii DCCA — LLC articles of organization fee scheduleHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-04
  17. Hawaii DCCA — business registration FAQ, the quarter-based annual report due dateHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-04
  18. Hawaii Department of Taxation — general excise tax brochure, the $20 one-time registration feeHawaii Department of Taxation · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-04
  19. Hawaii Board of Barbering and Cosmetology — beauty shop licence feesHawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-04

Related

Commercial Compliance Hub publishes information, not legal advice. Requirements change — confirm anything you rely on with the issuing agency before you file.