Prince George's County, MD Business Licensing & Operations: Tattoo & Body Modification (2026)

" The Ordinance defines the X designation to mean the use "is prohibited as a principal use in the zone," full stop, with no special-exception path available in any of those zones. A tattoo shop proposed on land zoned for any of those eleven residential or rural classifications cannot obtain a use and occupancy permit for that purpose; the Ordinance's separate table for the county's nonresidential, commercial, industrial, and activity-center base zones instead shows a mix of permitted and prohibited outcomes zone by zone, so an operator has to confirm the specific commercial or industrial zoning of a parcel before signing a lease.

The Ordinance's definitions section separately describes a "Tattoo or body-piercing establishment" as a place where designs, letters, figures, body piercing, or other marks are placed on the skin using ink or other substances that permanently color or puncture the skin with needles or similar instruments, the trigger that pulls a business into this use category regardless of what it calls itself commercially.