How to Start a Massage Business in Mississippi

Who licenses massage in Mississippi

Massage therapy answers to the Mississippi State Board of Massage Therapy, under the Mississippi Professional Massage Therapy Act, Title 73, Chapter 67 of the Code, a chapter extended in 2025 to July 1, 2029. The board licenses massage therapists, licenses the schools and instructors that train them, registers continuing education providers, and, with authority effective July 1, 2021, registers massage businesses. It is a small, complete regulator: five members, three of whom must be licensed massage therapists, with authority to inspect business premises, intake forms, charts and appointment books during operating hours.

The board's boundaries are as instructive as its powers. The Department of Health does not license massage therapists, a point the department makes, and the Board of Cosmetology and Barbering's establishment license does not reach massage: a massage room inside a salon is documented through the massage board's registration, not the salon's license, and the cosmetology board's application asks about massage because it is someone else's regulated service. The board's own law examination study guide also draws the scope line, noting that esthetic work is outside a massage therapist's scope and massage is manipulation of soft tissue, never diagnosis.

Mississippi massage at a glance

The massage therapist license, step by step

Section 73-67-35 builds the training requirement as a formula rather than a single number. The applicant submits certified transcripts verifying a board approved training program of not less than 550 hours of massage therapy instruction and at least 50 hours of student clinic, with a grade of C or better in every course: 200 hours of massage theory and practicum, including at least 100 hours of massage demonstration and supervised practice; 200 hours of science of the human body; 150 hours of allied modalities; and 50 hours of supervised student clinic comprising at least 50 one hour hands on sessions. Programs must hold national accreditation, such as COMTA, or meet the same or greater requirements, and no program may exceed 40 in class clock hours per week. The board's own law examination study guide states the total the way schools advertise it, as 600 hours of massage education. The 700 hour figure older association pages still show is outdated; the statute controls.

Beyond the transcript, the applicant must be 18 or older, hold a high school education or GED equivalent, and show proof of at least 8 hours of CPR and first aid training from a board approved organization whose course includes hands on skills training. Examination is two part: a board comprehensive examination demonstrating competency, either the MBLEx administered by the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards or the board's own MPE I and MPE II, and the Mississippi State Law Examination administered by the board itself. Every applicant undergoes a fingerprint based criminal history check of the Mississippi central criminal database and the FBI database. The fee schedule in the board's rules, Title 30, Part 2501, Chapter 2, prices it at a $50 application fee and a $200 two year license fee, the license fee including the mobile therapist card issued to therapists without a fixed place of business; a paper application packet requested by mail costs $15. All board fees are nonrefundable.

Renewal is synchronized across the whole profession, which is the system's defining trait. All massage therapy licenses expire on May 31 every other year. Online renewals must be completed by the expiration date; paper renewals must be postmarked no later than May 1, thirty days before expiration, and carry a $35 paper renewal fee. Renewal requires current CPR and first aid certification and 24 hours of continuing education per cycle, including 3 hours of Mississippi massage law, 3 hours of ethics, 3 hours of CPR and first aid, and 1 hour of human trafficking. A lapsed license draws a reapplication fee on top of the current license fee when it has been expired more than 90 days, licenses cannot be renewed while fines are outstanding, and a therapist expired for more than three years reapplies as a new applicant.

The business registration and the wall certificate

The business side of Mississippi massage runs on two documents. The first is the massage business registration, which the board has required since its registration authority took effect July 1, 2021. The board's registration form prices it at $50, payable by money order or cashier's check only, a payment detail worth noting in a digital filing world. The form asks for the business's city or county business permit number and its expiration date, and for a list of every massage therapist working in the business with each one's status marked as employee, independent contractor or sole proprietor. A separate relocation form moves the registration when the business moves.

The second document is personal to each therapist and travels with her: the wall certificate. On initial licensure the therapist receives a license certificate for the business identified on the application, plus the mobile therapist card, and the board's rules require a wall certificate at each place of business where she practices. Starting work at a new location requires a new certificate request, so a therapist who splits the week between a spa and a rented suite holds certificates for both. Section 73-67-21(1) makes the establishment responsible for verifying the license of every person practicing massage at it, and the board's study guide extends the same duty to advertising: the therapist, the business and the publisher share responsibility for seeing that the therapist's license number appears on every advertisement, and the number is legally required on her business cards.

Forming your business entity

Most Mississippi massage businesses 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. 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, 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 reason a Mississippi massage business forms in Mississippi. Reserving a name before filing costs $25. A sole proprietor skips the certificate and the annual report entirely; for a renting therapist, the sole proprietor form is not a shortcut but the exact status the massage board's registration form assigns her. Form the entity deliberately, and let the board file and the tax file describe the same business.

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 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 massage business 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 answer to who stands behind the sign. An LLC trading under its exact filed name needs nothing at all. One name caution is specific to this trade: the business name on the board's registration, the wall certificate and the advertisements carrying the license number should all describe the same business.

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 business sells retail, the unemployment insurance employer account when you hire, and the business bank account all key off the 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 massage business keeps two calendars that never align, the April 15 annual report and the May 31 license expiration, and clean separate books are what make both survivable. The account also draws the line that matters if a therapist's classification is ever questioned: the business'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. Massage is not on the list. A massage session, a couples appointment and a package of sessions 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 if the desk sells things. Massage oils and lotions sold for home use, candles, and wellness products are sales of tangible personal property, taxable at the 7 percent state rate, with any local taxes the Department of Revenue publishes for the 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 practice 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.

Room rent and worker classification

No guide in this cluster gets to quote its regulator on classification, but this one can, because the Board of Massage Therapy's business registration form works the three cases itself. An owner renting a room to a massage therapist is only the landlord and building owner and does not file the registration. A therapist paying rent for the room files the registration as owner and sole proprietor. An owner who will give the therapist a 1099 or a W-2 files as the business, with the form noting that the hiring entity controls the result of the work. Every therapist working in the business is then listed on the form with a status, employee, independent contractor or sole proprietor. The board is not deciding tax law, but its paperwork forces the business to declare the relationship in writing, which is exactly where classification disputes are won and lost.

The general law behind the form is the usual control analysis. 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, consistent with the sole proprietor filing the board expects from her. A therapist whose schedule, prices, products and clients the business controls reads as an employee whatever the paperwork calls her, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading. The wall certificate follows the therapist either way; the establishment's duty to verify her license applies whether she is staff, contractor or tenant.

Hiring employees in Mississippi

The first hire registers the business as a Mississippi employer on two tracks. For unemployment insurance, the business 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 business 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 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. Two massage specific duties ride along with any hire: the establishment must verify the license of every therapist practicing there, and client records for condition specific treatment must be kept for two years. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same first hire checklist.

Local rules for a Mississippi massage business

The local layer is built into the state file for this trade, because the Board of Massage Therapy's business registration form requires the city or county business permit number and its expiration date as part of the registration itself. A massage business therefore obtains its city business or privilege license before it can complete its state registration, at fees and on forms the city itself sets. A business opening inside a city such as Jackson, Gulfport, Hattiesburg or Tupelo starts at city hall, then files with the board.

Zoning sits underneath the licensing. The business registration and the wall certificates are issued for the locations they name, a move means a relocation filing with the board and new certificates, and none of that answers whether a massage establishment may operate at the address: the city or county zoning for the specific parcel does. Make the zoning call before the lease is signed, because in this trade the local permit comes first: the state form will not complete without it.

Insurance for a Mississippi massage business

Nothing in Chapter 67 or the board's rules, as read for this guide, conditions the massage license or the business registration 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 hands on work with clients in private rooms, and Mississippi's structure argues for reading it carefully: the establishment is responsible for verifying the licenses of everyone practicing in it.

General liability for the premises and property coverage for tables, equipment, build out and retail stock complete the standard stack. Landlords, and suite landlords in particular, routinely write their limits and additional insured requirements into the lease, and those contract numbers are the figures to satisfy; a renting therapist should expect the landlord's insurance requirements and the board's registration form to ask about her business from opposite directions in the same week. Mississippi names no required limit for a massage business, so treat any figure quoted as a state requirement as a sales line.

Your Mississippi renewal calendar

Official sources

• Mississippi State Board of Massage Therapy: therapist licensing, approved programs, examinations and massage business registration
• Board of Massage Therapy: Mississippi State Law Examination study guide, with the May 31 expiration, renewal, wall certificate and business registration rules
• 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 massage FAQ