Mississippi Workers’ Comp Exemption
We file workers’ compensation exemptions for Mississippi sole proprietors, LLC members, and corporate officers. Send us your details and we’ll confirm whether you qualify and handle the filing.
When coverage is required in Mississippi
Mandatory for any employer that regularly employs 5 or more workers/operatives in the same business (Miss. Code Ann. §71-3-5), regardless of full-time/part-time/seasonal/temporary status. Employers with fewer than 5 employees are not required to carry coverage but may do so voluntarily.
Who can be excluded in Mississippi
Sole proprietors
Not automatically covered. The EMPLOYER (not the individual) may elect, by proper written action of its governing authority, to exempt its sole proprietor from the Workers' Compensation Law, provided the sole proprietor also voluntarily agrees in writing. An exempted sole proprietor is excluded from the headcount used to determine whether the 5-employee threshold is met.
Partners
Same mechanism as sole proprietors: the employer may elect in writing to exempt a partner in a partnership, with the partner's written consent; an exempted partner is excluded from the 5-employee headcount.
LLC members
Not specifically addressed in the Mississippi statute found (§71-3-5 names sole proprietors, partners, and stock-owning corporate employees, but not LLC members by name). Secondary sources treat LLC members analogously to sole proprietors/partners for practical purposes, but this is not confirmed by statutory text — treat as unverified/ambiguous rather than a stated rule.
Corporate officers
An employee who owns 15% or more of the stock of their corporate employer may be exempted by the same mechanism: written election by the employer's governing authority plus the employee's voluntary written agreement. That person is then excluded from the 5-employee headcount. No numeric cap on the number of officers who can be exempted this way was found in the statute.
How the exemption is filed
Mississippi does NOT run a state-filed exemption certificate/registry for this. The mechanism under §71-3-5 is an internal written election by the employer's own governing body (e.g., corporate resolution) combined with the individual's written voluntary agreement — it is not a form submitted to and approved by the Mississippi Workers' Compensation Commission (MWCC). No specific state form number, filing agency, or fee for this election was found; treat formName/formUrl as unverified (set to null) rather than guessed.
- Form
- No state exemption form — see above
- Statute
- Miss. Code Ann. §71-3-5
- Market
- Competitive — coverage is bought from a private carrier.
Notes and open questions
Direct WebFetch attempts against mwcc.ms.gov (homepage and two PDFs) failed to return readable content in this session (blank/encoded). The statutory language above is corroborated consistently across multiple independent search-engine summaries quoting §71-3-5 text (via Justia/FindLaw code reproductions), so confidence is medium rather than high — I was not able to independently confirm this against the MWCC's own site content this session. If publishing, phrase the exemption mechanism carefully as an employer-election-plus-employee-consent process, NOT a 'state exemption filing' with a form/fee, since no such filing was verified to exist.
Sources
- https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/2020/title-71/chapter-3/subchapter-generalprovisions/section-71-3-5/
- https://codes.findlaw.com/ms/title-71-labor-and-industry/ms-code-sect-71-3-5/
- https://mwcc.ms.gov/
Source material dated undated (statute as currently codified; retrieved via search index 2026-08-30). Compiled from official Mississippi sources as a starting point, not legal advice — rules change, and your situation may turn on facts this page cannot see. Confirm with Mississippi Workers' Compensation Commission (MWCC) or ask us and we’ll check it for you.
Workers' comp exemption filing in Mississippi
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