How to Start a Microblading Business in Montana

Who regulates microblading in Montana

The regulator is the Department of Public Health and Human Services, acting through its Body Art program in the Food and Consumer Safety Section, under Title 50, chapter 48 of the Montana Code Annotated and the department's rules at ARM Title 37, chapter 112. The department's program covers four services: tattooing, cosmetic tattooing, body piercing and ear piercing. Microblading and the rest of permanent makeup fall inside cosmetic tattooing, because section 50-48-102 defines tattooing as making permanent marks on the skin by puncturing the skin and inserting indelible colors, which is a precise description of what a microblading hand tool does. The department licenses body art facilities across the state, and county sanitarians conduct the inspections, so the inspector a studio actually meets is usually a county official applying the state rule.

The other regulator's role is to decline jurisdiction. The Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists states on its homepage that it does not regulate tattooing, body and ear piercing, permanent makeup or microblading, and directs readers to the health department. That statement has two practical consequences. A cosmetologist or esthetician license neither authorizes microblading nor counts toward it, however relevant the skin training feels. And a salon or lash studio adding a microblading chair is adding a second, independent licensing regime inside the same premises, with its own license, its own inspection and its own training records. The Secretary of State, the Department of Revenue and the local zoning office complete the map, as they do for every Montana business.

Montana microblading at a glance

The practitioner rules: training without an artist license

The feature of the Montana framework that surprises artists arriving from other states is the missing credential: Title 50, chapter 48 licenses establishments, and creates no individual artist license for the state program. There is no Montana artist application, no state artist examination and no state artist fee to budget. What the framework imposes on the people doing the work is a training regime, administered through the establishment's compliance file. The department's body art materials require bloodborne pathogen training every year and first aid certification every two years, and the department's inspection form tests the establishment against the rules at ARM Title 37, chapter 112, subchapter 1, including the training rule at 37.112.147. An artist's private microblading certification is commercially valuable and often what clients and insurers ask about, but in Montana law it is the establishment's license and training file, not the certificate on the wall, that carry the regulatory weight.

Two qualifications keep that picture accurate. First, section 50-48-203 lets a local board of health operate its own licensure program in place of the department's, and a local program can structure its requirements differently, so an artist should confirm the position with the county health department where the studio will sit before assuming the state framework is the only one in play. Second, the establishment license does not float free of the artist: an unlicensed premises cannot be cured by a trained artist, and a licensed premises with lapsed training records is out of compliance at inspection. The studio's file should therefore hold, for every artist including the owner, current bloodborne pathogen certificates on the annual cycle, first aid certificates on the two year cycle, and the operational records the inspection form calls for, kept for three years.

The establishment license, step by step

Section 50-48-201 is the licensing section, and its requirements are specific. A person operating an establishment must procure a license from the appropriate regulatory authority, which the statute defines as the department or the local board of health, local health officer or local sanitarian, depending on how the jurisdiction is organized. The license is annual. A separate license is required for each establishment located on different premises, so a second studio across town is a second license, not an endorsement of the first. An establishment offering multiple types of body art needs separate licenses for body piercing and for tattooing, which matters for studios that pair microblading with piercing services. And the license is not transferable: it does not pass to a buyer, a new entity or a new location by assignment.

The operating rules the inspection tests sit in ARM Title 37, chapter 112. The license requirement and display rule at 37.112.150 requires the license to be held and posted conspicuously, the training rule at 37.112.147 carries the bloodborne pathogen and first aid duties, and the inspection form records the operational habits the department expects to find: client and procedure records kept for three years, and sterilization verified by monthly autoclave spore tests where reusable equipment is sterilized on site. The statute sets the establishment fee by rule under sections 50-48-103 and 50-48-203 rather than printing an amount, and local programs set their own, which is why this guide does not print a dollar figure for the license: the correct amount is the one the department or the local program quotes for the studio's jurisdiction, confirmed before the application is filed.

Forming your business: the LLC

Most Montana microblading studios form a limited liability company under Title 35, chapter 8. Formation is one filing: Articles of Organization to the Secretary of State's Business Services division through the online filing portal, for $35, naming the company and its registered agent in Montana. Amendments cost $15, termination costs nothing, and a certificate of existence costs $5 when a landlord or lender asks for proof of standing. The license holder and the entity should be thought through together, because the establishment license is not transferable: restructuring the business mid stream can mean a new license application rather than a paperwork amendment.

The recurring obligation is the annual report, due April 15 each year, with the fee waived when the report is filed by April 15 and $35 when filed after. A company that lets its reports lapse faces reinstatement at $35 plus $35 for each delinquent year. The report keeps the entity alive on the register, which the lease, the bank account and the establishment's compliance file all assume.

Registering your studio name

A studio trading under a name other than its legal name registers an assumed business name with the Secretary of State under Title 30, chapter 13, part 2, for $20. Under section 30-13-206 the registration is effective for five years and renews for another five year term at $20, with the Secretary of State notifying registrants before expiration. Amending costs $20 and canceling is free. A $10 name reservation can hold a name during organization, but it is a different instrument from the registration, and both run on clocks separate from the LLC's April 15 annual report and the establishment license's annual renewal.

Getting your EIN

The Employer Identification Number is the federal tax identity for the business, issued free by the IRS. A microblading studio with employees needs one before the first payroll, because Montana withholding and unemployment reporting key off it, and a single member LLC that elects corporate tax treatment or opens a business bank account will be asked for one as well. Apply on the IRS site, keep the number with the LLC records, and use the same legal name on the EIN record, the Secretary of State filings and the establishment license so the files match when an inspector compares them.

Sales tax: the tax Montana does not have

Montana has no general sales tax, and the Department of Revenue's sales tax guidance for Montana businesses and residents confirms it. For a microblading studio that means no tax collected on a brow service or a touch up, and none on the aftercare and retail products a client takes home, because the state levies no general tax on either. There is no sales tax permit to obtain and no sales tax return to file, which removes the service versus retail bookkeeping split that occupies studios in most states.

The qualifications still apply. Studio profits remain subject to Montana income tax, on the owners' returns for a pass-through LLC, and employers register for withholding and unemployment insurance as the hiring section describes. A studio in a designated resort community may face the local resort tax on its retail sales and should confirm its position with the community and the Department of Revenue. Aftercare products shipped to customers in other states follow those states' rules; Montana's clean register ends at the state line.

Working inside a salon or suite

Microblading is most often added to an existing salon, lash studio or suite building, and Montana's two frameworks compose in a specific way when they share a roof. The salon's premises hold the cosmetology board's salon or shop license for the hair, skin and nail services, and the microblading operation needs the body art establishment license for the same premises under the health framework; neither license covers the other's services. The artist performing microblading does not need a booth rental license for that work, because the booth license authorizes the cosmetology chapter's services and microblading is not one of them; if the same artist also performs lash or skin services as a renter, the booth license analysis applies to those services separately.

The practical arrangement follows from the licenses. The establishment license should name the premises where the pigment work actually happens, the training and spore test records should live where the inspector will look for them, and the lease or rental agreement should allocate the compliance duties expressly, because the body art inspector and the cosmetology inspector answer to different departments and different rules. A suite owner hosting a microblading tenant should treat the tenant's establishment license the way she treats a booth license: verified at signing, verified at renewal, and never assumed.

Hiring artists: wages, unemployment and withholding

Montana's minimum wage is $10.85 an hour from January 1, 2026, under the annual inflation adjustment in section 39-3-409, up from $10.55 in 2025 and recalculated every fall. Montana allows no tip credit, so a tipped artist is paid the full $10.85 in wages with tips on top. An artist the studio schedules, prices and directs is an employee for wage and tax purposes whatever the paperwork calls her; a genuinely independent artist renting space and serving her own clientele is structured through the premises licenses rather than the payroll, and the studio should paper that relationship as carefully as a salon papers a booth rental.

Hiring as an employer triggers three registrations. The studio registers with the Unemployment Insurance Division and pays contributions on the first $47,300 of each employee's wages in 2026, the wage base set at 80 percent of the state average annual wage; new employers start at their industry's average rate, which for services in 2026 is 1.10 percent on Schedule I, plus the 0.18 percent Administrative Fund Tax. The studio registers with the Department of Revenue for withholding through the Montana Business Registration form or the TransAction Portal, with employees completing Form MW-4 and the year reconciled on Form MW-3. New hires are reported to the Department of Labor and Industry within 20 days, and the studio carries workers' compensation coverage through the Montana State Fund or a private insurer.

The local layer: health districts, zoning and premises

The local layer does double duty for a body art studio, because the licensing authority itself may be local. Section 50-48-203 allows a local board of health to run its own licensure program in place of the department's, and inspections are conducted by county sanitarians either way, so the studio's first call should be to the county health department where it will sit: that call establishes who issues the license, what the fee is, and what the local program expects at inspection. Alongside it sit the ordinary local gates: zoning approval for the use, building and signage permits, and occupancy inspection, all on the city or county calendar.

Premises facts carry consequences here too. The establishment license is specific to the premises and is not transferable, so a move, a new entity or a sale of the business each point toward a new license rather than an amendment, and the timing of the new application belongs ahead of the move. Studios inside salons should confirm with the licensing authority that the body art license and the salon license can coexist at the address as structured, since the two departments inspect the same rooms against different rules.

Insurance for a Montana microblading studio

Neither framework conditions its license on liability insurance, so coverage is a business judgment apart from workers' compensation for employees, carried through the Montana State Fund or a private insurer. For pigment work the judgment should not be casual: the standard stack is general liability for the premises and professional liability written expressly for tattooing and permanent makeup services, which insurers underwrite as a distinct risk from esthetics, plus property coverage for equipment and pigment inventory. A studio whose artists hold esthetics policies should check that the policy actually reaches pigment insertion, because in Montana law and in insurance practice alike, microblading is tattooing, and a policy written for facials will not follow it there.

What it costs to open a Montana microblading studio

The state costs split into a priced stack and an honestly unpriced one. Priced: the LLC's Articles of Organization at $35, the assumed business name at $20 if the studio trades under a different name, the EIN at no charge, and the training courses the framework requires, which are priced by their providers on an annual and two year cycle. Unpriced in this guide, by design: the establishment license fee, because Title 50, chapter 48 sets it by rule and local health programs set their own, so the amount a studio pays comes from the department or the county program that will license it. Any source that prints a single statewide Montana body art fee without naming the program should be treated with suspicion.

The recurring state and compliance costs then run on their own calendar: the establishment license renews annually, bloodborne pathogen training renews annually, first aid renews every two years, spore tests run monthly where sterilization is done on site, and the LLC annual report is free when filed by April 15. The commercial costs, the room, the equipment, single use supplies, pigment stock and the insurance stack, are priced by the market rather than by any schedule.

Renewal and filing calendar

The rhythm of a Montana microblading year is an annual establishment license, annual safety training, and monthly sterilization records, a health department cadence unlike any other business in this cluster.

Official sources

• Department of Public Health and Human Services, Body Art program: tattooing, cosmetic tattooing and piercing, the establishment license, and the training and inspection framework.
• Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists: the board's homepage statement that tattooing, permanent makeup and microblading sit outside its authority.
• Secretary of State, Business Services filing fees: Articles of Organization at $35, the annual report terms, and assumed business name registration at $20.
• Department of Revenue, sales tax guidance: the department's statement that Montana does not have a general sales tax.
• Department of Labor and Industry, 2026 minimum wage determination: the $10.85 rate effective January 1, 2026 under MCA 39-3-409.
• Unemployment Insurance Division, contribution rates: the 2026 taxable wage base of $47,300 and the industry rates for new employers.
• IRS, apply for an EIN: the free federal application.

Montana microblading FAQ