In the magnetic ink character reading apparatus, a first determination section reads signal data sequentially from a signal data string corresponding to the output signals of a magnetic head and determines whether the signal data corresponds to a predetermined signal. A second determination section determines whether the determination results by the first determination section is obtained successively for at least a predetermined number of signal data. A determination counter section counts the number of times (count) the successive acquisition of the determination results each telling the disagreement of the signal data with the predetermined signal over at least the predetermined number of signal data has been confirmed by the second determination section. A character recognition processing execution limit section limits the execution of the character recognition processing according to the count result provided by the determination counter section.