A salon in Chicago runs on an Illinois salon registration plus a Chicago business licence. They come from different governments, renew on different clocks, and neither one tells you about the other.
Issued by Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR). The licence covers the premises; every stylist working in it also holds an individual licence.
IDFPR publishes salon and shop registration through its online portal rather than a single printed fee table. Confirm the current registration and renewal fee with IDFPR directly — Chicago office, 555 West Monroe Street, 5th Floor, (312) 814-6910.
City of Chicago business licence through BACP. This is the half that depends on your building rather than your trade, and it is usually the half that delays an opening.
The IDFPR salon registration and the Chicago BACP licence renew on their own separate schedules — letting one lapse does not warn you about the other.
Register with Illinois Secretary of State, Business Services — the Illinois LLC filing fee was $150 when we last checked, so confirm it with the office — and with the Illinois Department of Revenue for a Illinois Business Registration (Form REG-1) if you sell retail product alongside services.
Check whether your opening date is legally possible — free. Put in the business type and the address and you get the target date against the earliest legal open, with every permit, fee and deadline cited to the official source.
The full stack — every permit in filing order, the calendar, and the certificate-of-occupancy packet — is $49, one-time, no subscription. It is a live link your landlord or lender can verify themselves, not a PDF.
Checked at the official sources listed above on 2 September 2026. Fees and procedures change without notice and the agency’s own page is always the authority — this is a heads-up to go and look, not legal advice, and BondPermit does not file anything on anyone’s behalf.