How to Start a Barbershop in Mississippi

Who licenses barbershops in Mississippi

Barbershops answer to the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering, in Jackson, and the route to that answer is the state's 2025 merger. The former Board of Barber Examiners was abolished by House Bill 313 of 2024, the barber chapter of the Mississippi Code, Title 73, Chapter 5, was repealed effective January 1, 2025, and barbering was rewritten into the cosmetology chapter as section 73-7-13.1. Section 73-7-1 now provides that every reference to the old barber board in any law, rule or document means the merged board. A barber opening a shop today files with the same agency, on the same portal, under the same rule book, Title 30, Chapter 10, as the salon across the street.

What the merger changed is administration, not the shape of the trade. The barber license still exists as its own credential with its own training course and its own scope, and the establishment application still distinguishes the premises by type, with Barbering as one of the license types on the form. What disappeared is the separate fee schedule, the separate renewal discipline and the separate board office: section 73-7-29 now prices a barber's license in the same line as a cosmetologist's, and the shop's establishment license is the salon's establishment license with a different box checked. Massage, tattooing and braiding, the services a modern shop is most likely to add, sit outside the board entirely, with the State Board of Massage Therapy, the Department of Health and a Department of Health registration respectively.

Mississippi barbershop at a glance

The barber license, step by step

Section 73-7-13.1 admits an applicant to the barbering examination who is at least 16 years old, holds a high school education or its equivalent or is successfully enrolled in a community college, and has completed either 1,500 hours at a barbering school approved by the board or 3,000 hours of board approved apprenticeship training. The apprenticeship is the route with a barbershop's name on it: the trade has always trained at the chair, and Mississippi's merged statute keeps a formal version of that tradition alive for barbering on the same terms as cosmetology, at twice the school hours under board approval. The license that follows runs two years.

The crossover is the section a shop owner should read twice, because it prices the second license in the building. Under section 73-7-13(4), a licensed barber who has completed 1,500 hours of barber training and then 600 hours in a licensed cosmetology school may take the cosmetology examination. Under section 73-7-13.1(4), the mirror image holds: a licensed cosmetologist with 1,500 cosmetology hours and 600 hours in a licensed barbering school may take the barbering examination. A shop that wants one chair able to take every walk in, chemical work included, buys the second credential for 600 hours rather than a second full course. Examinations are now written theory alone: the board's Board Action Update of February 2, 2026 retired the practical examination and set the passing score at 70 for practitioners and 75 for instructors.

Fees and renewal put the barber on the cosmetology calendar. The license costs $50 under section 73-7-29, the schedule's single practitioner line covering cosmetologist, barber, wig specialist, nail technician and esthetician alike, with instructors at $80. Renewal is biennial at $50, with a 60 day grace period after expiration, a $50 delinquent penalty beyond it, a further delinquent fee for each year expired up to three, and reexamination after three years. No license renews until all board fines and penalties are paid in full, and licensees aged 70 or older owe no renewal fee. One transitional provision still runs: a practitioner who held a license at least 10 years and whose license expired between April 2016 and April 2026 may renew without retesting on filing the renewal form and paying all fees and fines owed, but only until December 31, 2026.

The establishment license for the shop

The shop itself is licensed separately from the barbers in it, on the same establishment license the salons use, applied for in the Barbering type. Rule 10.4 of the board's rules requires every establishment where a board licensed profession is practiced to hold an establishment license, and Rule 10.5 provides that the license cannot be issued until the premises pass an inspection by the board or its agent, scheduled only after a complete application is on file. The application fee is $85, nonrefundable, covering the application and the initial inspection together; a missed inspection appointment costs a $35 reinspection fee before the visit is rescheduled.

The application asks for proof of the business's good standing with the Secretary of State where that applies, a building permit for new construction where applicable, evidence of successful county or city and fire department inspection where applicable, a list with quantities of equipment, and a list of every licensed practitioner associated with the establishment. It also asks whether the shop will offer services the board does not regulate, naming massage therapy, braiding, tattooing and piercing. Once issued, the license renews at $60 with a $50 delinquent penalty; a license expired more than one year cannot be renewed and requires a new application; and the license does not transfer, so any change of ownership, location, including a different area inside the same building, or name requires a brand new establishment license application.

Forming your business entity

Most Mississippi barbershops form as a limited liability company with the Secretary of State, and the state's fee schedule makes the arithmetic simple. The Certificate of Formation, Form F0100 on the schedule, costs $50. What surprises owners arriving from other states is what does not follow: Mississippi charges no franchise tax on a domestic LLC, and the LLC annual report, Form F0108, is priced at $0. The report is still a real filing with a real deadline, due April 15 every year and fileable online any time on or after January 1, and letting it lapse costs the entity its good standing, with reinstatement priced at $50. That standing matters to a shop, because the establishment license application asks for proof of it where it applies.

The same fee schedule prices the variations an owner might meet. Registering a foreign LLC, one formed in another state, costs $250, and its annual report costs $250 every year, which is the entire reason a Mississippi shop forms in Mississippi. Reserving a name before filing costs $25. A sole proprietor skips the certificate and the annual report entirely, which is the one structural reason some Mississippi barbers start unincorporated, at the price of holding the business's liabilities personally.

Business names: the voluntary fictitious name registration

Mississippi's trade name system is the most relaxed in this series, because the filing most states require is one Mississippi merely offers. The Fictitious Business Name Registration Act, sections 75-93-1 and following, created a voluntary, centralized registry at the Secretary of State so the public can find the legal name behind a business name. Registration is not required, no penalty attaches to operating unregistered, and registering grants no exclusive right to the name. The Secretary of State's fee schedule prices the registration, Form F0070, at $25, and the registration runs for a five year term, renewable for another $25 due by December 31 of the fifth anniversary year. There is no county level filing to pair with it.

Voluntary does not mean useless. A shop trading under a name different from its legal name will meet the question at the bank, at the payment processor and on the establishment application, and the $25 registration is the cleanest public answer to who stands behind the sign. An LLC trading under its exact filed name needs nothing at all. Either way, the registration creates no entity and substitutes for no license, so choose the shop name before the establishment application is filed rather than after.

Federal tax ID and business banking

Apply for an Employer Identification Number on IRS.gov. It is free, it issues online in one session, and any site charging for an EIN is selling a form you can file yourself. The EIN is the key that opens the registrations that follow: the Department of Revenue's TAP account, the unemployment insurance employer account when you hire, and the business bank account all key off the federal number paired with the Secretary of State's entity records.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every fee, product order, rent payment and payroll deposit through it. A Mississippi shop's compliance calendar is spread across the year, practitioner and establishment renewals, a sales tax schedule assigned by the Department of Revenue and an annual report every April 15, and clean separate books are what make it survivable. The account also draws the line that matters if a barber's classification is ever questioned: the shop's money and the chair renters' money should never share a ledger.

Sales tax in Mississippi: services are not taxed, retail is

Mississippi's sales tax is a tax with a list, and the list is the whole analysis. The general levy reaches retail sales of tangible personal property, and section 27-65-23 separately taxes the gross income of the business activities the legislature enumerated: air conditioning work, vehicle repair, car washing, hotels and motels, laundering and dry cleaning, plumbing, pest control, renting personal property and other named trades. Barbering is not on the list. A haircut, a shave and a beard trim carry no sales tax, because the tax was never written to reach a service the statute does not name.

The register still needs the tax, because the counter sells things. Pomade, tonics, blades and take home treatments are retail sales of tangible personal property, taxable at the 7 percent state rate, with any local taxes the Department of Revenue publishes for the shop's address applied on top. Register the business with the Department of Revenue through TAP, the Taxpayer Access Point, and hold the sales tax account and permit before the first retail sale; the Department advises applying at the earliest convenience because the permit process can take up to three weeks. Set the point of sale to itemize services and products on separate lines from day one.

Chair rent and worker classification

Mississippi has no chair renter license, no booth registration and no rental permit in its cosmetology rules, and the structure that makes chair rent work here is the establishment license itself. Every premises where a board licensed profession is practiced needs an establishment license, so a renter's chair is lawful when it sits inside premises holding a current establishment license and the renter holds a current barber license of their own. The subtlety is who holds the premises license: Rule 10.4 makes the license nontransferable and ties it to the operator and the exact area, so a renter running his own business in a defined part of the shop may need an establishment license of his own rather than shelter under the shop's. The salon suite guide works through the enclosed room version of that question.

Classification is the part the cosmetology rules do not decide. No Mississippi cosmetology statute blesses a rental arrangement or fixes its tax treatment, so the question is answered the way it is answered everywhere: by control. A renter who sets his own prices, hours and client list, collects his own money and carries his own supplies reads as an independent business renting space. A barber whose schedule, prices, products and clients the shop controls reads as an employee whatever the agreement calls him, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading.

Hiring employees in Mississippi

The first hire registers the shop as a Mississippi employer on two tracks. For unemployment insurance, the shop completes a Status Report, Form UI-1, with the Mississippi Department of Employment Security, online or through a local tax field representative. A commercial employer becomes liable on paying $1,500 in wages in a calendar quarter, or when a worker performs services in some portion of a day in each of 20 different calendar weeks in a year. The Department's published schedule for new employers runs 1.0 percent for the first year of liability, 1.1 percent for the second and 1.2 percent for the third and following years until the employer qualifies for a modified rate, which can run from 0.2 to 5.4 percent, on the first $14,000 of wages per employee per calendar year. Reports are quarterly, due April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31. For income tax, the shop registers with the Department of Revenue, through TAP, to withhold Mississippi tax from wages, collecting Form 89-350, the state withholding exemption certificate, from each employee; the Department's withholding formula for 2026 applies the state's flat 4 percent rate to taxable income above $10,000.

The wage floor is federal, because Mississippi has not enacted a state minimum wage law. The U.S. Department of Labor's state minimum wage table lists Mississippi with no state law, so the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour under the Fair Labor Standards Act is the floor for covered employers, federal overtime at one and one half times the regular rate applies past 40 hours in a workweek, and state law bars cities and counties from setting a higher local wage of their own. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same first hire checklist, arranged before the first employee's first shift.

Local rules for a Mississippi barbershop

The state licenses do not finish the opening. The establishment application itself builds the local layer into the state file: where they apply, the board wants evidence of successful county or city inspection and fire department inspection before the license issues, and a building permit where new construction is involved. A shop opening inside a city such as Jackson, Gulfport, Hattiesburg or Tupelo should also expect a city business or privilege license on top of the state stack, at fees and on forms the city itself sets; the massage board's business registration elsewhere in Mississippi law expressly requires the registrant's city or county business permit number.

Zoning sits underneath the licensing. The establishment license is issued for the premises in the application, a move to a new address, or even to a different area inside the same building, requires a new establishment application, and none of that answers whether a barbershop may operate at the address at all: the city or county zoning for the specific parcel does. Make the zoning call before the lease is signed, because the board's inspection and the local use approval come from separate governments, and a shop needs both.

Insurance for a Mississippi barbershop

Nothing in Chapter 7 or the board's rules, as read for this guide, conditions the establishment license or any practitioner license on an insurance filing, so the insurance stack is set by risk and by contract rather than by the board. Professional liability is the core policy for a business built on straight razors, clippers and hot towels, and the chair rent structure has to think hardest about it: the shop's policy, each renter's own policy and the lease describe overlapping people in the same room, while responsibility for the room itself sits with the establishment license holder.

General liability for the premises and property coverage for chairs, stations, build out and retail stock complete the standard stack. Landlords, and suite landlords in particular, routinely write their own limits and additional insured requirements into the lease, and those contract numbers are the figures to satisfy. Mississippi names no required limit for a barbershop in the cosmetology rules, so treat any figure quoted as a state requirement as a sales line.

Your Mississippi renewal calendar

Official sources

• Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering: barber and practitioner licenses, the establishment license, examinations and renewals
• Mississippi Code sections 73-7-1 and 73-7-13.1 as brought forward in Senate Bill 2440 (2026): the merged board and the barber license
• Secretary of State: Business Documents Filing Fees schedule, the $50 Certificate of Formation, the free annual report and the $25 fictitious name registration
• Department of Revenue: the 7 percent sales tax, sales tax permits and employer withholding
• Taxpayer Access Point (TAP): register for a sales tax account and permit, file and pay
• Mississippi Department of Employment Security: employer FAQs, Form UI-1 registration, new employer rates and the $14,000 wage base

Mississippi barbershop FAQ