How to Start a Microblading Business in Tennessee

Who licenses microblading in Tennessee

Microblading in Tennessee is tattooing, and tattooing belongs to the Department of Health. The Department of Commerce and Insurance, which runs cosmetology, says so in its own FAQ: anyone asking what license covers tattoos or semi-permanent makeup is told the trade is regulated by the Department of Health, not by the cosmetology board. The legal framework is the tattoo part of the Tennessee Code, Title 62, Chapter 38, Part 2, and it is administered locally: the Department of Health's Environmental Health Program licenses tattoo artists and permits and inspects tattoo establishments through your county health department. There is no permanent cosmetics license, no microblading certificate and no cosmetology shortcut in Tennessee law.

The framework licenses two things, on an annual cycle that ends every December 31. The artist holds a state license, registered with the Department of Health, that transfers between certificated studios. The studio holds a studio certificate issued by the local health department after inspection. A microblading business needs both layers, and a cosmetology license changes neither: a licensed aesthetician doing brows without the tattoo credentials is, in the eyes of the statute, an unlicensed tattoo artist working in an uncertificated studio.

Tennessee microblading business at a glance

The tattoo artist license path, step by step

You must be at least 18. Before any license issues, you complete two pieces of training: a sterilization program, which can be the Alliance of Professional Tattooists course, a health department program, another approved course, or a college or medical sterilization course; and up to one hour of human trafficking recognition training, provided free by a nonprofit approved by the Tennessee Human Trafficking Advisory Council under the Ink of Hope Act. Artists licensed as of the end of 2025 have until December 31, 2028 to complete the trafficking training, while new applicants complete it before the permit issues. You then pass a written examination prescribed by the local health department, which includes trafficking questions.

The full artist license is earned in a shop, not a classroom. It requires training in the profession for at least one year in a certified shop, under a currently licensed artist who has been certified and operating in compliance in Tennessee for no fewer than three years, or who pairs a shorter Tennessee record with 10 or more years licensed in another state. Your supervising artist signs the state's apprenticeship completion application when the year is done. The apprentice registration, for artists in that training year, costs the same $140 as the full license, and every registration, artist, apprentice, temporary and operator alike, costs $140 a year and expires on December 31. An experienced out of state artist has a second door: showing at least two years of professional experience can substitute for the examination subsection. Fees more than 30 days late draw a penalty of half the fee, and a license expired more than a year sends you back through the apprenticeship route.

The studio certificate and your premises

No studio operates without a studio certificate. The certificate is issued by the local health department after the studio is inspected and found in compliance, it costs $280 a year, and it expires every December 31. The operator of the studio must be registered with the state as an operator or as an artist, which is why a non-artist owner files the $140 operator registration: the state wants a named, registered person behind every certificated room. Studios are inspected a minimum of four times a year, the most frequent inspection cycle of any Tennessee beauty premises.

The enforcement teeth are written into the same section. Violations are classed critical or minor, and a critical violation, a dead autoclave, reused single use items, unsterile instruments, missing hand washing facilities, carries a $100 civil penalty and, if the health department deems it necessary, immediate shutdown of the studio. Client age is a hard line: tattooing anyone under 18 is prohibited, with one narrow exception for a person 16 or older being tattooed to cover an existing tattoo, with a parent's written consent and the parent present. If the studio sits inside a salon or spa, add the cosmetology layer: Board sanitary rules will not allow tattooing inside a cosmetology, skin care or manicuring shop unless it is in a separate room with hard walls. Budget the December renewal as a fixed season, certificate and every artist registration in the building come due together.

Forming your business entity

Most Tennessee microblading business businesses form as an LLC, and Tennessee prices the filing by the head. The Articles of Organization, Form SS-4270, cost $50 for each member in existence on the filing date, with a minimum fee of $300 and a maximum of $3,000. A one member LLC pays the $300 minimum. A four member LLC pays the same $300, because four members at $50 each is $200 and the minimum controls. Only at seven members does the per member math pass the floor. You file online through the Secretary of State's Tennessee Charity and Business filing system, or by mail or in person in Nashville, and the form asks for your fiscal year ending month, whether the LLC is member managed or manager managed, and the number of members at filing.

The same math comes back every year. The LLC annual report is due on or before the first day of the fourth month after your fiscal year closes, which is April 1 for a December year end, and the Secretary of State charges the annual report on the same per member structure: a $300 minimum up to a $3,000 maximum, increasing $50 per member for every member over six. Budget the $300 as a fixed annual cost of the Tennessee LLC form, not a one time fee. A corporation is the alternative entity, and its charter filing fee is a flat $100, but a corporation carries its own governance formalities and the same franchise and excise tax filing described below.

Two smaller filings round out the entity layer. If you want to reserve a name before you are ready to file, a name reservation on Form SS-9425 costs $20. If an LLC is administratively dissolved for a missed annual report, reinstatement on Form SS-9410 costs $70 on top of the reports and fees owed. None of these filings replaces the licenses above: the Secretary of State registers your entity, and the licensing board licenses your people and your premises, and the two systems do not talk to each other.

Business names and assumed name registration

Tennessee splits assumed name filings by filer type. A registered entity, meaning a corporation, an LLC or a limited partnership, registers an assumed name with the Secretary of State on Form SS-4402 for $20. The registration runs five years and renews on Form SS-4481 for another $20, and a change is filed on Form SS-4403 for $20. A sole proprietor or a general partnership does not file an assumed name with the Secretary of State at all: the trade name a sole proprietor works under runs through the county business tax license instead, which is one more reason the county clerk visit in the local section matters.

An assumed name registration is a public notice filing, not a trademark and not a license. It does not stop anyone else from using a similar name, and it does not need to match your entity name, but the name on your shop license application, your business tax license and your signage should tell one consistent story, because clients, inspectors and your bank all read them side by side. If you later change the name on a cosmetology board shop license only, the Board charges a $10 name change fee under its fee rule.

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 you for an EIN is selling you a form you can file yourself. You need the EIN to open the business bank account, to run payroll once you hire, and to register the employer accounts described below. A single member LLC can technically operate on the owner's Social Security number for some purposes, but banks, payment processors and the Department of Labor employer registration all run more cleanly on an EIN, and handing your personal number to every vendor is a habit worth avoiding from day one.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and EIN exist, and run every license fee, product order and rent payment through it. Tennessee's franchise and excise tax and the gross receipts business tax both reward clean books, because both are computed from records you keep rather than from anything the state can see on its own.

Business tax, sales tax and franchise and excise tax

Tennessee has three state tax layers for a microblading business business, and they are easy to confuse because two of them have similar names. The first is the business tax, a privilege tax on gross receipts administered by the Department of Revenue. Service businesses file under Classification 3, and the state retailer rate for Classification 3 is 3/16 of 1 percent, or 0.1875 percent, of gross receipts, with a $22 minimum tax per location. Cities may levy the business tax as well at their own adopted rates, so many Tennessee businesses file a state return and a city return on the same receipts. The return is due annually on the 15th day of the fourth month after your fiscal year ends. Classification follows your dominant business activity, one classification per location.

The business tax license is separate from the return, and it is issued locally. You register for the tax through TNTAP, the Department of Revenue's online system, and you pay a $15 business license registration fee to the county clerk, and to the municipal clerk as well if your city levies the tax, for each new business. A location with gross receipts over $3,000 and under $100,000 holds a minimal activity license. At $100,000 or more you need a standard business license. The Department is blunt about the order of operations: a business may not operate until the required license is obtained and posted.

The second layer is sales tax, and for microblading and permanent makeup services it mostly does not apply. Tennessee taxes retail sales of tangible personal property and a short list of services the statute names, and beauty services are not on that list, so you do not collect sales tax on service receipts. Product is different: shampoo, retail cosmetics and anything else you sell off the shelf is taxable at the 7 percent state rate plus your local option rate, which runs as high as 2.75 percent, for a combined rate as high as 9.75 percent. You register for sales tax through the same TNTAP account. The third layer reaches entities only: an LLC or corporation files an annual franchise and excise tax return, Form FAE 170, where the franchise tax runs 0.25 percent of Tennessee net worth with a $100 minimum and the excise tax runs 6.5 percent of Tennessee taxable income. Sole proprietors and general partnerships do not file that return, which is a real, if modest, point in favor of the simpler forms for a solo operator.

Renting space as a Tennessee tattoo artist

Guest spots and rented stations follow the studio certificate, not the artist. Your artist license is statewide and transfers between certificated studios, so a licensed artist can guest in any Tennessee studio that holds a current certificate. What you cannot do is work in premises that have no certificate and treat your personal license as cover for the room: the certificate belongs to the location, is issued after inspection, and the studio's operator answers for conditions inside it. A salon or suite that wants to host microblading needs the space certificated as a tattoo studio in its own right, with the cosmetology hard wall separation on top, before the first appointment is booked.

Conventions and pop ups use the temporary route instead: written local health department approval for no more than 10 days at a temporary location, a $50 registration for each artist not already registered, and a temporary artist registration that runs no more than 14 days and cannot be renewed or transferred. Put the arrangement in writing either way, naming the certificate holder, the operator registration and who carries the insurance, because when an inspector walks in, the paperwork on the wall is the business.

Hiring employees in Tennessee

Your first hire registers you as an employer with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development for unemployment insurance, and you file wage reports quarterly after that. New employer premium rates are set by industry, and the Department states the new employer premium rate for all other industries is 2.7 percent of taxable wages. Your rate becomes experience rated after your account has been chargeable with benefits for 36 consecutive months ending on a December 31. The taxable wage base is set by statute in tiers tied to the unemployment trust fund balance, so confirm the current figure in your employer account when you register rather than budgeting from a number in a guide.

The rest of the Tennessee payroll picture is unusually light. Tennessee has no state income tax on wages, so there is no state withholding to set up, and Tennessee has no state minimum wage law, so the federal $7.25 an hour applies, with the federal tip credit rules for tipped staff. Light does not mean optional: worker classification is where Tennessee beauty businesses get hurt, because calling a stylist an independent contractor does not make her one for unemployment premium purposes if you control her schedule, her prices and her clients. The hiring decision and the booth rent decision in the previous section are the same decision seen from two sides, and the Department of Labor only cares about the substance of the arrangement.

County, city and local rules

The local layer starts at the county clerk's office, where your business tax license is issued for the $15 registration fee described in the tax section, and at city hall if your city levies its own business tax, which the larger cities, including Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga, do through their own clerks. Beyond the license itself, your premises pass through local zoning, a building or occupancy permit for the buildout, and fire and life safety inspection, none of which the state board handles. A change of location is also a state event, not just a new lease: a relocated shop needs a new inspection and a new shop license application with the Board before you work at the new address.

Local rules are also where signage, home occupation limits and parking requirements live, and they differ enough between a Memphis storefront, a Knoxville strip center and a home based studio in a small county that no state guide can price them for you. Get the clerk's business license, the zoning answer and the inspection schedule in writing before you sign the lease, because every state license in this guide is issued for a specific address and a move restarts parts of the stack.

Insurance for a Tennessee microblading business

The Board's rules do not publish a required insurance amount for a Tennessee microblading business, so treat insurance as a risk decision and a lease decision rather than a licensing line item. In practice, a landlord will name the coverage he expects in the lease, and a business working on hair, skin or bodies should carry professional liability for the services themselves, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for equipment and retail stock. If you rent chairs or rooms to other licensees, your policy and theirs should both name the arrangement, because the designated manager structure means an incident in a renter's chair can still land on the shop license holder's desk first.

Your Tennessee renewal calendar

Official sources

• Tenn. Code Ann. section 62-38-202: studio certificates, inspections and the $280 permit fee
• Tenn. Code Ann. section 62-38-204: artist licensing, training and the $140 fee
• Tenn. Code Ann. section 62-38-205: temporary locations and temporary artist registrations
• Tenn. Code Ann. section 62-38-211: age limits for tattooing
• Hamilton County Health Department: tattoo artist paths, training and renewals
• Department of Health Environmental Health: the tattoo program and local health departments
• Department of Commerce and Insurance: miscellaneous licensing FAQs
• Rule 0440-02-.06: tattooing inside a cosmetology shop requires a separate room with hard walls
• Form SS-4270: Articles of Organization, $50 per member, $300 minimum, $3,000 maximum
• Secretary of State: business forms and filing fees, including SS-4270, SS-4402 and SS-9410
• Department of Revenue: business tax registration and the county and city business license
• Department of Revenue: sales and use tax, 7 percent state rate plus local option
• Department of Revenue: franchise and excise tax rates and due dates
• Department of Labor and Workforce Development: how the employer premium rate is set

Tennessee microblading FAQ