How to Start a Braiding Business in Mississippi

Who regulates braiding in Mississippi

Braiding is regulated, barely, by the Mississippi State Department of Health. Its Professional Licensure division administers the hair braider registration under section 73-7-71 of the Code and the department's rules at Title 15, Part 19, Subpart 60, Chapter 5. The same division registers tattoo and body piercing artists, and the department is careful elsewhere in its own materials to note that it does not license cosmetologists or massage therapists. The Board of Cosmetology and Barbering, which licenses the rest of the hair trades, has no braiding jurisdiction over a registered braider: the statute makes registration with the department the very thing that exempts the braider from the cosmetology and barbering licensure law.

The limits are written into the law itself, and they are the story. Section 73-7-71 states that the purpose of the registration is only to provide the department with a listing of persons engaging in hair braiding, and that it does not authorize the department to license or regulate the practice of hair braiding except as the section provides. What the section provides is the brochure, the self-test and the inspection for them. The section also does not apply to licensed cosmetologists, barbers or wig specialists, who braid under their own licenses without registering. Everything else about a braiding business belongs to the general agencies: the Secretary of State for the entity, the Department of Revenue for taxes, the Department of Employment Security if it hires, and the city for its own permits.

Mississippi braiding at a glance

The registration, step by step

The registration itself is three acts. First, register with the State Department of Health before braiding for compensation: section 73-7-71 opens with the prohibition, that no person shall engage in hair braiding for compensation without first registering, and the department's rules price the registration at $25.00. Second, obtain the department's brochure on infection control techniques and complete the self-test it contains. Third, keep the brochure and the completed self-test available at the location where the braiding is performed. The department's rules restate the sequence in the same order, register, complete the self-test, keep the documents at the premises, and add the inspection term: department representatives may visit any braiding establishment at any time during business hours, defined as 8:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M., to determine whether the brochure and completed self-test are available there.

The definition is the fence around the whole arrangement, and a braiding studio should post its menu against it. Hair braiding, as the statute and the department's rules define it, is the practice of braiding techniques performed by hand or with devices, with natural or synthetic extensions and topical products, and it expressly excludes the application of dyes, reactive chemicals or other preparations to alter the color of the hair or to straighten, curl or alter the structure of the hair. Inside the fence, the registered braider needs nothing else from the state. Outside it, color services, relaxers and chemical restructuring are cosmetology, requiring a cosmetologist license for the hands and an establishment license for the room. A braiding studio that wants the chemical menu has the same two shapes as the lash studio in this cluster: add a licensed cosmetologist working in an establishment licensed space, or keep the menu inside the definition.

Renewal is the quietest part of the system. Nothing in the department's braiding rules sets an expiration date or a renewal cycle for the registration, and the statute's fee is capped at $25 with a listing purpose. This guide therefore calendars no renewal for it, while noting the two practical duties that do recur: the brochure and completed self-test must stay available at the premises every working day, and a braider who relocates should confirm with the department how the listing follows the new address, since the documents the inspector asks for are tied to the location where braiding is performed.

The premises position for a braiding studio

A braiding only studio needs no premises license from the Board of Cosmetology and Barbering. Rule 10.4 requires an establishment license for premises where a board licensed profession is practiced, and a registered braider working within the braiding definition practices no licensed profession; she is exempt from the licensure law the establishment license belongs to. The studio's state paperwork is therefore the braiders' personal registrations and the brochures on the premises, not a license for the room. The board's own establishment application acknowledges the arrangement from the other side, asking salon applicants whether the establishment will offer services the board does not regulate and naming hair braiding as defined by section 73-7-71 among them: a salon hosting braiders discloses them, and the braiders register themselves.

The position changes when the premises mix categories. A studio that adds licensed services, cutting and chemical work by a cosmetologist, facials by an esthetician, holds an establishment license for the premises like any salon, with the braiders working inside it on their registrations. A studio that adds massage or tattooing crosses into the other regulators entirely, the Board of Massage Therapy's business registration and the Department of Health's tattoo registration respectively. The clean braiding only studio is the simple case, and its premises obligations are local rather than state: the city business license and zoning of the next sections.

Forming your business entity

The registration is personal, but the business still needs a structure, and most Mississippi braiding studios form as a limited liability company with the Secretary of State. The Certificate of Formation, Form F0100 on the Secretary of State's fee schedule, costs $50. 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.

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 studio forms in Mississippi. Reserving a name before filing costs $25. A sole proprietor skips the certificate and the annual report entirely; for a braiding business, whose state file is otherwise a $25 registration, the entity records are the business's main paper trail, which is one more reason the $50 formation earns its keep.

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 studio trading under a name different from its legal name will meet the question at the bank, at the payment processor and on the lease, 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, and for a braiding studio it doubles as the second state document, after the health department registration, in a very short file.

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 if the studio sells retail, 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 braiding studio's recurring state obligations are the lightest in this cluster, an annual report every April 15 and whatever sales tax schedule the Department of Revenue assigns, and clean separate books are what keep them light. The account also draws the line that matters if a braider's classification is ever questioned: the studio'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. Braiding is not on the list. A braiding appointment, with extensions installed as part of the service, carries no sales tax, because the tax was never written to reach a service the statute does not name, and the braider's registration status under the health law is a separate question from tax status.

The register still needs the tax if the desk sells things. Hair sold over the counter as a retail product, oils, beads, accessories and take home care are sales of tangible personal property, taxable at the 7 percent state rate, with any local taxes the Department of Revenue publishes for the studio'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. A studio that sells nothing retail has no sales tax account to open. Set the point of sale to itemize services and products on separate lines from day one.

Chair rent and worker classification

Braiders rent chairs in salons and rent rooms in suite buildings across Mississippi, and the registration model travels with the braider rather than the premises. A registered braider renting a chair inside a licensed salon needs nothing further from the state for her own practice: her registration and her brochure are personal, the salon's establishment license covers the salon's licensed work, and the salon's application discloses braiding among the unregulated services it hosts. A braider renting her own room or storefront is in the same position as a braiding only studio, registered personally, with no establishment license for the room. The paperwork that matters is private: a written rental agreement stating who collects the client's money, who carries insurance and whose name is on the door.

Classification follows control, exactly as it does for licensed trades. No Mississippi statute fixes the tax treatment of a rental arrangement, so the question is answered by the relationship itself. A renter who sets her own prices, hours and client list, collects her own money and carries her own supplies reads as an independent business renting space. A braider whose schedule, prices, products and clients the salon controls reads as an employee whatever the agreement calls her, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading, and the employer registrations in the next section applying to a braiding business exactly as they apply to a licensed one.

Hiring employees in Mississippi

The registration model is not an employment exemption, and the first hire registers the studio as a Mississippi employer on two tracks. For unemployment insurance, the studio 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 studio 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 braiding studio

With no state premises license, the local layer is the braiding studio's only premises approval. A studio opening inside a city such as Jackson, Gulfport, Hattiesburg or Tupelo should expect a city business or privilege license, 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, which shows how standard that local document is. The Department of Health's inspection right runs on its own track and does not replace the city's: the department checks for the brochure and self-test, the city checks its own license and the building.

Zoning sits underneath everything. Nothing in the braiding registration answers whether a braiding studio may operate at a given address: the city or county zoning for the specific parcel does, and a home based braiding practice meets the city's home occupation rules instead. Make the zoning call before the lease is signed, because for this business type the local approval is not the last step of the opening; it is most of it.

Insurance for a Mississippi braiding studio

No Mississippi statute or rule, as read for this guide, conditions braiding registration on an insurance filing, so the insurance stack is set by risk and by contract rather than by the department. Professional liability is the core policy for a business built on tension, traction and long appointments, and its value is doubled in a registration trade: if a client is injured, the braider's file contains no license, no school record and no examination to point to, so her training records, her registration and her policy are her whole credential story.

General liability for the premises and property coverage for chairs, dryers, 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 braiding studio, so treat any figure quoted as a state requirement as a sales line.

Your Mississippi renewal calendar

Official sources

• Mississippi State Department of Health: Professional Licensure, the hair braiding registration under section 73-7-71 and the infection control brochure
• Secretary of State: Business Documents Filing Fees schedule, the $50 Certificate of Formation, the free annual report and the $25 fictitious name registration
• Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering: the licensure law the braiding registration exempts, and the establishment license
• 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 braiding FAQ