How to Start an Esthetics Business in Mississippi

Who licenses esthetics in Mississippi

Esthetics answers to the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering, in Jackson, the merged board created by House Bill 313 of 2024 when the former cosmetology and barber boards combined effective January 1, 2025. The esthetician license sits at section 73-7-18 of the Code, the esthetics scope is defined at section 73-7-2, and the board licenses the establishments where esthetics is practiced under Title 30, Chapter 10 of the Mississippi Administrative Code, on the fee schedule at section 73-7-29.

The definitional work matters more in esthetics than in any other Mississippi trade, because section 73-7-2 draws two boundaries an esthetics owner lives on. Inside the licensed side, the definition of cosmetology expressly includes tinting eyebrows and eyelashes, and the esthetics definition carries the skin care practice. Carved out of both definitions is the exempt trio, makeup artistry, threading, and applying or removing eyelash extensions, which anyone may perform without a license, alone or in combination. And outside the chapter entirely sits permanent makeup: microblading meets the statutory definition of tattooing and belongs to the Department of Health. An esthetics opening therefore answers to three regulators: the board for the license and the room, the Department of Health for any brow work done with a needle, and the general agencies for the business stack.

Mississippi esthetics at a glance

The esthetician license, step by step

Section 73-7-18 admits an applicant to examination who is at least 16 years old, can read, write and speak English, holds a high school education or its equivalent or is successfully enrolled in a community college, and has completed a course of training in esthetics of not less than 600 hours in a licensed school, including not less than 100 hours of theory and 500 hours of skill practice, or 1,200 hours in an apprenticeship program certified by the board. The statutory split is the detail to plan around: Mississippi does not merely count hours, it prescribes their composition, so a transfer student or an out of state graduate should have the school document the theory and skill practice blocks separately. The statute also credits the whole course upward, providing that a licensed esthetician may apply the 600 hours toward the requirements for a cosmetology license.

Examinations are now written theory only, the board having retired the practical examination in its Board Action Update of February 2, 2026, with a passing score of 70 for practitioners and 75 for instructors. Fees and renewal run on the chapter's shared terms: the license costs $50 under section 73-7-29, the single practitioner line covering cosmetologist, barber, esthetician, nail technician and wig specialist, with instructors at $80 and the master designation at $70. 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 years, and reexamination after three years. No license renews until every board fine and penalty is paid in full, and licensees aged 70 or older owe no renewal fee. Practitioner renewal carries no continuing education requirement; the chapter's continuing education structure attaches to the master designation under section 73-7-14 instead.

The scope lines an esthetics owner lives on are the ones section 73-7-2 frames. The esthetician's licensed ground is the practice of esthetics as the chapter defines it, together with the eyebrow and eyelash tinting the cosmetology definition names. The exempt trio, makeup artistry, threading and eyelash extensions, can be offered by anyone in the studio, licensed or not, which is why so many Mississippi esthetics rooms pair a licensed esthetician with an exempt lash artist. Microblading is the hard boundary: it punctures the skin and inserts pigment, which is the statutory definition of tattooing, and no cosmetology chapter license authorizes it. An esthetics studio adding permanent makeup is adding a Department of Health registration, covered in the microblading guide.

The establishment license for the studio

The studio itself is licensed separately from the esthetician in it, on the board's establishment license, applied for in the Esthetics type. The board's application form lists its license types as Cosmetology, Cosmetology + Wax, Barbering, Nail Technology and Esthetics, a list worth noticing because the Cosmetology + Wax type tells a waxing focused studio exactly which box its premises take. Rule 10.4 requires every establishment where a board licensed profession is practiced to hold the license, and Rule 10.5 provides that it 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 studio will offer services the board does not regulate, naming massage therapy, braiding, tattooing and piercing; an esthetics studio employing an exempt lash artist or hosting a registered brow artist should expect to describe that mixture. 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 esthetics studios 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 studio, 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 studio 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 estheticians 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 studio 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 studio 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 studio'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 practitioner's classification is ever questioned: the studio's money and the room 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. Skin care services are not on the list. A facial, a wax and a tint service 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 front desk sells things. Retail skin care lines, cleansers, serums and take home treatments 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. Set the point of sale to itemize services and products on separate lines from day one.

Room rent and worker classification

Mississippi has no room renter license, no booth registration and no rental permit in its cosmetology rules, and the structure that makes room 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 treatment room is lawful when it sits inside premises holding a current establishment license and the renter holds a current esthetician 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 her own business in a defined room may need an establishment license of her own rather than shelter under the studio's. The salon suite guide works through the enclosed room version of that question, which is the esthetics industry's dominant format.

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 her own prices, hours and client list, collects her own money and carries her own supplies reads as an independent business renting space. An esthetician whose schedule, prices, products and clients the studio controls reads as an employee whatever the agreement calls her, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading.

Hiring employees in Mississippi

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 esthetics studio

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 studio 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 an esthetics studio 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 studio needs both.

Insurance for a Mississippi esthetics studio

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 chemical peels, wax and work around the eyes, and the room rent structure has to think hardest about it: the studio'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 beds, steamers, 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 an esthetics studio 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: esthetician and practitioner licenses, the establishment license, examinations and renewals
• House Bill 753 (2024): sections 73-7-2 and 73-7-18, the esthetics definitions and the 600 hour esthetician course
• 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 esthetics FAQ