How to Start a Nail Salon in Mississippi

Who licenses nail salons in Mississippi

Nail salons answer to the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering, in Jackson. The board was created by House Bill 313 of 2024, which merged the former State Board of Cosmetology and the former Board of Barber Examiners effective January 1, 2025, and the nail license was rewritten in the merger: what the older Code called a manicurist's license is now the nail technician's license at section 73-7-21. The board licenses every practitioner in the salon trades 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 board's reach over a nail salon is the practitioner license, the establishment license and the inspection that connects them. What sits outside its reach matters to a nail business planning its menu: massage therapy answers to the State Board of Massage Therapy, so a salon adding massage chairs with therapeutic claims is adding a second regulator; braiding answers to a Department of Health registration; and tattooing, including the permanent makeup some nail and brow studios add, answers to the Department of Health as body art. The rest of the opening stack belongs to the general 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 nail salon at a glance

The nail technician license, step by step

Section 73-7-21 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 350 hours of practice and related theory in nail technology over no less than 9 weeks in a licensed school, in Mississippi or any other state, or 700 hours in an apprenticeship program certified by the board. At 350 hours the school course is the shortest practitioner training in the Mississippi chapter and the shortest nail course in this series: a full time student can finish in a single season. The statute also builds in the bridge upward, providing that hours a nail technician earns may be credited toward the requirements for a cosmetology license examination, so the nail license can be a first credential rather than a terminal one.

The apprenticeship deserves a salon owner's attention, because it is capacity limited by design. Apprenticeships under section 73-7-21 must be monitored or mentored by a person holding an instructor license in cosmetology or nail technology, and only one apprentice may be mentored by any person at the same time. A salon with one instructor can therefore train exactly one nail apprentice at a time, however many stations sit empty. The statute also gives the finished student a bridge to work: the board may issue a temporary permit to a student who has completed the prescribed hours in a licensed school or an approved apprenticeship, good until the next examination is held and never longer than six months. Examinations themselves 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.

Fees and renewal run on the chapter's shared terms. The license costs $50 under section 73-7-29, the single practitioner line that also covers the cosmetologist, barber, esthetician and wig specialist, 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 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. A practitioner who held a license at least 10 years and whose license expired between April 2016 and April 2026 may still renew without retesting on filing the renewal form and paying all fees and fines owed, but that transitional route closes on December 31, 2026.

The establishment license for the salon

The salon itself is licensed separately from the technicians in it, on the board's establishment license, applied for in the Nail Technology 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 salon will offer services the board does not regulate, naming massage therapy, braiding, tattooing and piercing, which is a live question for a nail salon with a massage chair or a brow artist. 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 nail 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 nail 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 nail technicians 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 technician's classification is ever questioned: the salon's money and the station 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. Nail services are not on the list. A manicure, a pedicure and an acrylic set 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. Polish, treatments, files and take home care 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.

Station rent and worker classification

Mississippi has no station renter license, no booth registration and no rental permit in its cosmetology rules, and the structure that makes station 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 station is lawful when it sits inside premises holding a current establishment license and the renter holds a current nail technician 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 technician 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 nail 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 nail 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 nail 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, acrylic systems and pedicure spas, and the station 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 stations, 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 nail 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: nail technician and practitioner licenses, the establishment license, examinations and renewals
• Mississippi Code section 73-7-21: the nail technician license, 350 school hours or 700 apprenticeship hours
• 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 nail salon FAQ