How to Start a Hair Salon in Mississippi

Who licenses hair salons in Mississippi

Hair salons answer to the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering, in Jackson. The board is the product of House Bill 313 of 2024, which merged the former State Board of Cosmetology and the former Board of Barber Examiners effective January 1, 2025, repealed the old barber chapter of the Mississippi Code, and moved barbering into the cosmetology chapter, Title 73, Chapter 7. One agency now licenses every practitioner in the salon trades, cosmetologist, barber, esthetician, nail technician, wig specialist and instructor, and the establishments where they work, under one rule book, Title 30, Chapter 10 of the Mississippi Administrative Code, and one fee schedule at section 73-7-29.

The merger matters to a salon owner in two practical ways. First, the neighboring trade is no longer another agency's business: a barber working in your salon holds a license from the same board that issued yours, under section 73-7-13.1, and the establishment application is a single form whose license types run from Cosmetology through Barbering, Nail Technology and Esthetics. Second, some things a salon might add are not this board's business at all. Massage therapy answers to the State Board of Massage Therapy, tattooing and microblading to the Department of Health, and braiding to a Department of Health registration. Everything else about opening belongs to other agencies: the Secretary of State for the entity, the Department of Revenue for taxes, the Department of Employment Security for unemployment insurance, and the city for its own permits.

Mississippi hair salon at a glance

The cosmetologist license, step by step

Mississippi gives a future cosmetologist two roads, and the second one is the state's signature. Section 73-7-13 admits an applicant to 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 of training over no less than 9 months in a licensed school of cosmetology or 3,000 hours in an apprenticeship program certified by the board. The apprenticeship route, at exactly twice the school hours, lets a salon train its own stylist under board oversight instead of waiting for a school graduate. A student who has completed the hours can receive a temporary permit to work while the examination is scheduled; the statute allows one.

Licensing now runs on one examination where it used to run on two. In a Board Action Update dated February 2, 2026, the board retired the practical examination and set the passing score on the NIC written theory examination at 70 for practitioners and 75 for instructors, so a new cosmetologist is licensed on theory alone. The license itself costs $50 under the fee schedule at section 73-7-29, the same $50 charged to a barber, a nail technician, an esthetician and a wig specialist, with instructors at $80 and the master designation at $70. A practitioner moving to Mississippi applies by reciprocity, at a $55 application fee in the board's data as published by the U.S. Department of Labor's CareerOneStop. The master designation is the chapter's one continuing education structure: under section 73-7-14 it is built on holding the cosmetology, manicuring and esthetics licenses together with prescribed continuing education, while ordinary practitioner renewal carries no continuing education requirement.

Renewal runs on a fixed two year cycle with a forgiving front end and a hard back end. The license renews biennially at $50, with a 60 day grace period after expiration. Past the grace period the renewal carries the $50 delinquent penalty; a license expired over a year draws a delinquent fee for each year up to three years, and past three years the practitioner takes the examination again. No license may be renewed until every board fine and penalty is paid in full, and licensees who are 70 years of age or older owe no renewal fee at all. One transitional door is still open as this guide is published: a practitioner who held a license at least 10 years and whose license expired between April 2016 and April 2026 may renew without retesting by filing the renewal form and paying all fees and fines owed, but that route closes on December 31, 2026.

The establishment license for the salon

The salon itself is licensed separately from everyone in it, and Mississippi sequences the opening with the inspection first. 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 have passed an inspection by the board or its agent, which can only be scheduled after a complete application is on file. The application fee is $85, nonrefundable, and covers the application and the initial inspection together. Miss the inspection appointment and the premises wait: a reinspection fee, $35 on the schedule, must be paid before the visit is rescheduled.

The application is a disclosure exercise as much as a fee. It asks for proof of the business's good standing with the Secretary of State where that applies, a building permit where new construction is involved, evidence of successful county or city and fire department inspection where applicable, a list with quantities of the equipment the salon will run, and a list of every licensed practitioner associated with the establishment. It also asks whether the establishment will offer services the board does not regulate, naming massage therapy, braiding, tattooing and piercing. Once issued, the license is a continuing obligation with sharp edges: renewal is $60 with a $50 delinquent penalty, a salon license expired more than one year cannot be renewed at all and requires a new application, the license does not transfer between owners, and 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 salons 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 salon, 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 salon 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 salon owners 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 salon 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 salon 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 salon'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 stylist's classification is ever questioned: the salon's money and the booth 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. Hair services are not on the list. A haircut, a color service and a blowout 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. Take-home shampoo, conditioner, treatments and styling products 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 salon'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.

Booth rent and worker classification

Mississippi has no booth renter license, no chair registration and no rental permit in its cosmetology rules, and the structure that makes booth 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 practitioner 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 part of the salon may need an establishment license of her own rather than shelter under the salon'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 her own prices, hours and client list, collects her own money and carries her own supplies reads as an independent business renting space. A stylist 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.

Hiring employees in Mississippi

The first hire registers the salon as a Mississippi employer on two tracks. For unemployment insurance, the salon 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 salon 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 hair salon

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 salon 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 salon 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 salon needs both.

Insurance for a Mississippi hair salon

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 services, hot tools and wet floors, and the booth rent structure has to think hardest about it: the salon'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, 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 hair salon 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: practitioner licenses, the establishment license, examinations and renewals
• 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 hair salon FAQ