Yes, if you work for yourself, and in this industry most stylists do. Booth renters, chair renters, suite renters, and freelance stylists are all self-employed in the eyes of the IRS, which means self-employment tax on top of regular income tax.
Chair renters and booth renters are self-employed
If you pay a salon for your chair, keep what clients pay you, buy your own color and backbar, and set your own book, you are running a business. The salon is your landlord, not your employer. Everything clients pay you, services, product sales, and tips, is business income on Schedule C, and your booth rent, supplies, license fees, and tools are deductions against it. The same is true for suite renters and stylists doing freelance or on-location work.
This catches new renters off guard because nothing is withheld from what they earn. At an employee job, taxes disappeared from each paycheck automatically. Behind the chair, every dollar arrives gross, and the tax obligation quietly accumulates until you pay it yourself.
How the 15.3% breaks down for a stylist
Self-employment tax is 15.3% of net earnings: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. It exists because employees and employers each pay half of these taxes, and a self-employed stylist is both. It applies once net earnings from self-employment reach $400 for the year, and it is calculated on Schedule SE, which attaches to your Form 1040 along with Schedule C.
Crucially, the 15.3% hits profit, not revenue. A stylist who brought in $85,000 behind the chair but paid $18,000 in booth rent and $9,000 in color, supplies, and education pays self-employment tax on roughly $58,000, not $85,000. Every legitimate expense you track cuts this tax directly. Two breaks are built into the forms: the tax is computed on 92.35% of net profit, and half of the self-employment tax you pay is deductible against your income tax.
Because nothing is withheld, self-employed stylists who expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year also pay quarterly estimates with Form 1040-ES, due Apr 15, Jun 15, Sep 15, and Jan 15. A steady habit of setting aside 25% to 30% of net income keeps those payments from hurting.
W-2 salon employees are the exception
Some stylists are genuine employees: the salon sets the schedule, supplies product, pays an hourly rate or commission through payroll, and issues a W-2. Employees do not pay self-employment tax; the salon withholds their 7.65% share of Social Security and Medicare and pays a matching share itself.
Watch for misclassification. A salon that controls your schedule and clients but pays you on a 1099 is shifting its payroll tax onto you. And many stylists are hybrids, W-2 at the salon plus self-employed freelance work on the side; the freelance profit still triggers self-employment tax at $400, even while the salon job withholds normally. When in doubt, look at how you are paid and who controls the work, because that, not the job title, decides the tax.