Sales tax on personal care: what a salon or spa charges in NY, NJ and CT

A client leaves a salon having had a manicure, a massage, and a bottle of polish rung up at the counter. In New York City that single ticket carries two different rates. Move the same shop to Yonkers and the service line falls to nothing. Move it to New Jersey and two of the three answers change again; move it to Connecticut and they change back. One purchase, four jurisdictions, and no rate that survives the trip.

This page covers personal care services only — hair, barbering, nail, spa, waxing, massage, tanning and the products a shop sells alongside them. Restaurants, prepared food, general retail, the New York clothing exemption, and nexus and marketplace facilitator rules are outside its scope and must not be read across from it.

Is it taxable where I am?

Three of these four jurisdictions decide this by naming what they tax and taxing nothing else, so the useful question is not whether a service sounds cosmetic or medical, invasive or superficial. It is whether a legislature wrote it down. New York answers in two places at once, because the only imposition that reaches personal care at all is a grant made to cities of a million or more.

New York City taxes personal care services, and it is the only place in New York that does. §1212-A(a)(2) reaches “beauty, barbering, hair restoring, manicuring, pedicuring, electrolysis, massage services and similar services”, and the power to impose that tax runs only to “any city in this state having a population of one million or more”. The rate in force is the one Tax Bulletin ST-575 states and Form ST-100.5, Schedule N, Part 3 collects; personal care receipts belong on that schedule and not on the combined-rate line of the main return.N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2) · TB-ST-575 · Form ST-100.5, Schedule N, Part 3 (rev. 6/26)

Outside New York City, personal care services are not taxable in New York at all, and the reason is an absence joined to a limit. §1105 imposes the State tax on goods at (a) and then enumerates the services it reaches; “beauty”, “barber”, “manicur”, “pedicur”, “massage”, “hair” and “electrolysis” appear nowhere in the whole of it. The only imposition that does reach these services is §1212-A, and §1212-A(a) grants that power to “any city in this state having a population of one million or more”. A salon in Buffalo, Yonkers or Ithaca charges nothing on the service.N.Y. Tax Law §1105(a), (c) · N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2)

New Jersey taxes a service only where it has named it. N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(b) enumerates fifteen paragraphs, and a haircut, a colour, a blow-dry, a manicure, a pedicure, a facial and a wax appear in none of them — so they sit outside the sales tax entirely, and there is no rate to quote. The test is what the Legislature listed, not whether the service is medical or cosmetic, invasive or surface, salon or spa.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10)

Exactly three of the fifteen paragraphs at N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(b) can reach a salon or a spa: tanning at (b)(8), “massage, bodywork or somatic services” at (b)(9), and tattooing, permanent body art and permanent cosmetic make-up at (b)(10). The other twelve are fabricating, installing and repairing, storing, maintaining real property, mail processing, utility, investigation and security, information, telephone answering and radio subscription, with two deleted by amendment. So a $400 balayage, a full set of acrylics and a Brazilian wax go untaxed while the tanning bed at the back does not. The three are not taxable without qualification either: (9) and (10) each carry a prescription exception printed on the face of the paragraph.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10) · P.L.2013, c.193, §1 (approved 2014-01-17)

N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(b)(9) taxes “massage, bodywork or somatic services, except such services provided pursuant to a doctor’s prescription.” The exception is unqualified as to purpose — any prescription, for any condition — so a spa billing a prescribed massage collects nothing on it. The statute never says what a prescription is. Publication ANJ-25 does: it names who may write one — a medical doctor, osteopath, chiropractor, podiatrist, dentist, or a psychologist holding a doctorate — and requires it in writing, carrying the patient’s name, the referring doctor’s name and signature, the purpose of the referral, and the conditions to be addressed. A practitioner holding a verbal referral is collecting tax, and cannot learn that from the statute.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10) · P.L.2013, c.193, §1 (approved 2014-01-17) · Publication ANJ-25

The companion exception is far narrower, and collapsing the two into “the prescription exception” teaches the opposite of what it says. N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(b)(10) excepts only such services “provided pursuant to a doctor’s prescription in conjunction with reconstructive breast surgery” — and that trailing clause is the whole of P.L.2013, c.193, the act the Legislature named Jen’s Law. A prescription alone does not exempt permanent eyeliner; only a prescription tied to that surgery does.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10) · P.L.2013, c.193, §1 (approved 2014-01-17) · NJ Division of Taxation notice, last updated 2025-04-30

Connecticut makes a service taxable only by naming it. §12-407(a)(2)(I) makes a sale out of “the rendering of certain services, as defined in subdivision (37)”, and subdivision (37) is a closed list running (A) to (QQ). Barbering and hairdressing are not in it: the strings “barber”, “hairdress”, “haircut”, “beauty shop”, “beauty salon”, “cosmetolog” and “hairstyl” appear nowhere in the whole of chapter 219. The one near-catch-all, (BB), is expressly bounded to SIC industry group 729 and four NAICS codes, and barber shops and beauty salons are in neither list. What is untaxed is the haircut, not the shop: the same chair can render enumerated services — hair transplants named in (LL), and a wax or a facial at the same premises reached by (NN).Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

Connecticut taxes “manicure services, pedicure services and all other nail services, regardless of where performed, including airbrushing, fills, full sets, nail sculpting, paraffin treatments and polishes” under §12-407(a)(37)(MM). “Regardless of where performed” is doing deliberate work: it defeats the argument that a manicure given inside a hair salon takes the hair salon’s untaxed character. The service is classified, not the premises. And there is no local option in Connecticut — one statewide rate, which is the largest structural difference from New York, where the answer to “what rate” begins with which city.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

Connecticut taxes “spa services, regardless of where performed, including body waxing and wraps, peels, scrubs and facials” under §12-407(a)(37)(NN). That single line is the whole of the subparagraph: no massage carve-out, no licence proviso, no cross-reference to (BB). The Department of Revenue Services publishes its own services list with “but not including services by licensed massage therapists” appended to the spa line — a defensible harmonisation with (BB)(i), and still not statutory text.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

What rate do I charge?

Two of the rows below are the same shop on the same ticket. The other two are what a practice with locations across a state line is comparing them against — each a single statewide rate, with no local option to add on top.

§1212-A(a) authorises “any city in this state having a population of one million or more” to impose the tax, and New York City is the only such city. §1212-A(a)(2) then describes the rate as one “not to exceed four and one-half per centum, in multiples of one-half of one per centum” — a ceiling and a step, not the rate in force. What New York City actually charges comes from Tax Bulletin ST-575 and Form ST-100.5, Schedule N, and it has stood at the ceiling since 1 August 2009. The Council can move the rate down within that grant; it cannot move it up without Albany. That the two figures are equal today is exactly why a page must not publish the statute as though it were the rate.N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2) · TB-ST-575 · Form ST-100.5, Schedule N, Part 3 (rev. 6/26)

A single-rate point-of-sale configuration cannot be right in New York City. One ticket carries two rates — the manicure at 4½% and the bottle of polish at 8.875% — because they rest on different grants: the service on §1212-A alone, the goods on §1105 plus §1210(a)(i)(1) plus §1109. Neither the State’s four percent nor the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District’s ⅜ percent reaches personal care, so the two rates differ by 4⅜ points and not by 4½. The geography inverts as well: the service is taxable only inside the city, while the product is taxable everywhere in the State. Personal care receipts belong on Form ST-100.5, Schedule N, Part 3; posting them to the main return’s combined New York City line over-remits.N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2) · TB-ST-575 · Form ST-100.5, Schedule N, Part 3 (rev. 6/26) · N.Y. Tax Law §1105(a), (c) · N.Y. Tax Law §1210(a)(i)(1) · N.Y. Tax Law §1109

Products versus services

In each of these states goods and services reach the tax by opposite methods inside a single section: the shelf is taxed by a general imposition with exemptions carved out of it, while the chair is taxed only if it was named. So the reasoning that leaves a haircut untaxed has no purchase whatever on the bottle sold beside it. A shop that reads across from one to the other has not made a near miss — it has used the wrong method.

A bottle sold across the counter is not a service. §1105(a) imposes the State tax on “the receipts from every retail sale of tangible personal property”, and in New York City that same receipt also carries the city tax authorised by §1210(a)(i)(1) and the three-eighths of one percent Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District tax at §1109. Retail product sales are taxable everywhere in New York State; only the local components change.N.Y. Tax Law §1105(a), (c) · N.Y. Tax Law §1210(a)(i)(1) · N.Y. Tax Law §1109

Retail product sales sit under the goods provision at N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), not under the enumerated-services provision at (b). The two run in opposite directions inside one section — (a) taxes “every retail sale of tangible personal property” and then carves out exemptions, while (b) taxes nothing it has not named — so the shelf and the chair are decided by different methods, and reading across from one to the other is not a near miss but the other method. Shampoo sold across the counter is taxable; that the haircut it was sold alongside is not changes nothing about the bottle.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10)

§12-408(1)(A) taxes “the gross receipts of any retailer from the sale of all tangible personal property sold at retail or from the rendering of any services constituting a sale”. Goods and services get there by opposite methods inside one section: §12-407(a)(2)(A) makes a sale out of any transfer of tangible personal property for a consideration, while (a)(2)(I) reaches only what subdivision (37) names. So the reasoning that leaves a Connecticut haircut untaxed — an absence from a closed list — has no purchase whatever on the shelf. A bottle of polish across the counter is a retail sale under §12-407(a)(3)(A), and it is taxable.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-408(1)(A) · Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

Supplies and use tax

The colour, wax and polish a shop works into a client are the case where all three states arrive at the same answer by different routes: the shop buys them at retail, and no resale certificate is available for them. What differs is which provision closes the door — and what happens to stock taken tax-free and then used on a client rather than sold to one.

Inside New York City the resale certificate is closed off by name. §1212-A(b)(1) provides that a sale of tangible personal property to a person “for use by him in performing a service subject to the tax imposed under the authority of paragraph two … of subdivision (a)” — that is, in performing a taxable personal care service — “shall not be deemed a purchase for resale”. The colour, the wax and the polish a salon works into a client are bought at retail by the salon, however the service itself is taxed.N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2)

Form ST-120 covers goods bought to be resold as goods, and nothing else. §1101(b)(4)(i)(B) is the only other way out of a retail sale, and it is confined by enumeration: the property must be used in performing a service taxable under §1105(c)(1), (2), (3), (5), (7) or (8), and must become a physical component of what is worked on or be transferred to the purchaser of the service. Personal care is in none of those paragraphs — it is nowhere in §1105 at all — so that escape is closed to a salon anywhere in New York State, before §1212-A is reached. §1101(b)(7) then makes withdrawal from storage and consumption a “use”, and §1110(a) taxes it. Stock taken tax-free on ST-120 and later pulled off the shelf for a client turns out to have been bought at retail. Inside New York City, §1212-A(b)(1) forecloses the same argument a second time and by name.N.Y. Tax Law §1110 · N.Y. Tax Law §1101(b)(4)(i), (b)(7) · N.Y. Tax Law §1105(a), (c) · N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2)

A New Jersey salon buys its own shampoo, colour, wax, polish, capes, dryers and chairs at retail, and no resale certificate is available for them. N.J.S.A. 54:32B-2(e) defines a retail sale as any sale other than for resale, and (e)(1)(B) confines resale treatment to property bought “for use by that person in performing the services subject to tax under subsection (b) of section 3”. A haircut is not among those services, so there is nothing for the exclusion to attach to and the shop is the statutory end user. The client is not charged a second time on the same bottle: (e)(4)(A) takes property transferred as an inconsequential element of a personal service, with no separate charge, outside the definition of a retail sale altogether. What this reasoning does not reach is supplies consumed in a service New Jersey does tax — massage oil, tanning lotion, tattoo ink — where (e)(1)(B) is live and the question is genuinely open.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-2(e), (e)(1)(B), (e)(4)(A) · N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10) · N.J.S.A. 54:32B-6

N.J.S.A. 54:32B-6 imposes the use tax on the use of property within the State “unless [it] ha[s] already been or will be subject to the sales tax” — which is the shop’s own supplies and equipment whenever it bought them with no New Jersey tax charged. The out-of-state beauty supply distributor, the online order from an unregistered vendor and the styling chair trucked in from Pennsylvania are one transaction for this purpose: tax was not collected, so it is owed.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-6

Connecticut taxes nail and spa services, so a salon there has an argument no New Jersey salon has — that the polish is consumed in delivering a service the State already taxes in full. Connecticut does not accept it. §12-410(a) presumes every receipt taxable, and §12-410(b) closes the grounds for a resale certificate to three: intending to sell the property in the regular course of business, intending to use it in delivering landscaping or horticulture services, or being unable to tell at the time of purchase which it will be. The “used up in delivering a taxable service” ground names two industries and no others, and the fact that it had to be legislated in for landscaping is the proof this is the statute’s design rather than its silence. So the salon buys at retail — and §12-410(d)(1) closes the other end, deeming property taken on a certificate and then used rather than sold a retail sale by the purchaser, at cost. §12-412(11) keeps the client from being taxed twice on the same bottle, exempting a personal service transaction involving sales as inconsequential elements for which no separate charges are made; but it withdraws that exemption where the service transaction is itself an enumerated one, so on a manicure the polish bears tax when the salon buys it and its value sits inside a fully taxed service receipt as well.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-410(a), (b), (d)(1) · Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN) · Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-412(11)

§12-411(1)(A) imposes an excise tax on “the storage, acceptance, consumption or any other use in this state” of tangible personal property purchased from any retailer, and on the acceptance or receipt of services constituting a sale under §12-407(a)(2), at the same rate as the sales tax. It is not only about supplies and equipment brought in untaxed from out of state: by pointing straight back at §12-407(a)(2) it reaches taxable services bought without Connecticut tax as well.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-411

Where two states disagree

Two questions get opposite answers either side of a state line, and both are the kind a practice answers once and then carries with it. A licence exempts a massage in one state and is beside the point in another; the same laser removes the same hair and is taxed in one and not in the next.

New York and Connecticut legislate on the same fact — a massage therapist who holds a licence — and run it in opposite directions. Connecticut takes the licensed therapist out of the tax: §12-407(a)(37)(BB) is “exclusive of … services rendered by massage therapists licensed pursuant to chapter 384a”. New York City leaves them in, and not because its exclusion list omits them. §1212-A(a)(2) excludes “a physician, osteopath, dentist, nurse, physiotherapist, chiropractor, podiatrist, optometrist, ophthalmic dispenser or a person performing similar services licensed under title VIII of the education law”, and massage therapy is licensed under title VIII — so the statute read alone points toward exemption. What settles it is Tax Bulletin ST-575, which taxes massage “even if you are a licensed massage therapist under Title VIII of the Education Law”. A practice with locations either side of that state line asks one question and needs two answers.N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2) · TB-ST-575 · Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

In Connecticut the same massage is taxable or not according to who performed it. §12-407(a)(37)(BB) reaches miscellaneous personal services “exclusive of (i) services rendered by massage therapists licensed pursuant to chapter 384a, and (ii) services rendered by an electrologist licensed pursuant to chapter 388”. Licensed, the massage is carved out and is not taxable; unlicensed, it stays inside (BB) and is. A shop therefore has to know the credential status of every provider on its floor. One thing the statute does not settle: (NN) reaches spa services “regardless of where performed” with no licence proviso of its own, so whether a licensed therapist working inside a spa is exempt under (BB)(i) or taxable under (NN) is a genuine open question.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

Laser hair removal has to miss two taxes in New Jersey, and both were checked. It is absent from the fifteen paragraphs of N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(b), so no sales tax reaches it. And the cosmetic medical procedures gross receipts tax, whose definition at 54:32E-1(b) names laser hair removal expressly, has been imposed by 54:32E-2(3) “at the rate of 0%” on procedures performed on or after 1 July 2014. Two live Division of Taxation publications still describe that tax as though it were collectible; neither of them sets the rate, and the provision that does reads zero.N.J.S.A. 54:32B-3(a), (b)(1)-(b)(15), esp. (b)(8)-(10) · N.J.S.A. 54:32E-1(b) · N.J.S.A. 54:32E-2(3)

Connecticut taxes services in connection with a cosmetic medical procedure at §12-407(a)(37)(LL), and the definition names laser hair removal outright, alongside cosmetic surgery, hair transplants, cosmetic injections, soft tissue fillers, dermabrasion and chemical peel, laser skin resurfacing, laser treatment of leg veins and sclerotherapy. Unlike the massage rule there is no licence proviso anywhere in (LL). Do not generalise it to hair removal as such: electrolysis is carved out of (BB) by (ii) where the electrologist is licensed under chapter 388, and body waxing is a taxable spa service under (NN). Three ways of removing the same hair, three provisions — and New Jersey answers the laser question the other way.Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-407(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(I), (a)(3)(A) and (a)(37)(A)-(QQ), esp. (BB)(i), (BB)(ii), (LL), (MM), (NN)

A licensed massage therapist collects New York City’s personal care tax, and the licence is not a reason to think otherwise — it is a reason to check. §1212-A(a)(2) excludes services rendered by “a physician, osteopath, dentist, nurse, physiotherapist, chiropractor, podiatrist, optometrist, ophthalmic dispenser or a person performing similar services licensed under title VIII of the education law”, and massage therapy is licensed under title VIII, at Education Law article 155 — so the statute read alone points the other way. Tax Bulletin ST-575 answers that catch-all in terms, taxing massage at the New York City rate “even if you are a licensed massage therapist under Title VIII of the Education Law”. This is a city tax: outside New York City there is no personal care tax for a licence to matter to.N.Y. Tax Law §1212-A(a)(2) · TB-ST-575

What this guide does not answer

Every statement above rests on a verified record, and where there is no record this page says so rather than closing the gap with an inference. These are the questions a shop is likely to have that it should not settle from this page. Bring them to us with the facts of the particular shop — each of them turns on something the sources behind this guide do not decide.

• Tanning outside New Jersey. New Jersey names tanning in its enumeration, as set out above. What New York or Connecticut does with a tanning bed is not stated here.
• Electrolysis, in any of the three. The word appears inside statutory language quoted above, and Connecticut's licensing carve-outs run alongside it — but a phrase inside a quotation is not an answer to the question, and no record behind this page has been built to give one.
• Laser hair removal in New York. New Jersey and Connecticut answer this in opposite directions above. New York sits between the two and is not addressed.
• Tattooing and permanent make-up outside New Jersey. New Jersey's two paragraphs, and the narrow exception on one of them, are set out above. New York and Connecticut are not.
• Products and supplies in New York outside New York City. Every New York statement here about the shelf and about the stockroom is anchored to the city. A shop upstate needs the same questions put again.
• What New York charges on a use-tax liability. The New Jersey and Connecticut use taxes are described above, each running at that state's own sales tax rate. This page publishes no New York use-tax rate, and none should be inferred from the table.
• A licensed massage therapist working inside a Connecticut spa. One subparagraph carves the licensed therapist out of the tax; another reaches spa services regardless of where they are performed and says nothing about licences. The statute does not resolve which governs, and neither does this page.

Last verified: 2026-09-08