United States business-filing facts, with the evidence attached

Filing fees, statutes, closure calendars, good-standing decoders, DBA regimes and name rules for all 54 US filing jurisdictions. Every published value shows its citation, its official source, the date it was retrieved, and whether it has reviewed it. Where we cannot show that, we say so instead of guessing.

The finding this record exists to publish

Keeping a limited-liability company alive costs $35.00 in the first year in Montana and $1,040.00 in Massachusetts - a 30x spread for the same entity typeEntity typesLLC (limited liability company), corporation (for-profit; 'profit corporation' in some states' vocabulary), nonprofit corporation, LP (limited partnership), LLP (limited liability partnership), LLLP (limited liability limited partnership),Read the full entry → doing the same thing. Almost nobody publishes that number, because almost nobody holds the formationFormationCreating the entity: articles of organization (LLC), articles or certificate of incorporation (corporation), certificate of limited partnership (LP).Read the full entry → fee, the mandatory first-year filings, the annual reportAnnual reportThe recurring filing most states require to keep an entity's record current - officers, addresses, registered agent.Read the full entry → and the recurring entity-tax minimum as separate sourced records that can be added up. The full ranking, with every component sourced.

Analysis

Questions that can only be answered by reading across every jurisdiction at once. All 10 analyses.

• Cost to keep an LLC aliveFormation plus mandatory first-year filings plus annual report plus the recurring entity-tax minimum, ranked cheapest to most expensive.
• Formation fee, and what is actually remittedThe statutory fee against the amount that leaves the bank, and the surcharge column most published comparisons omit.
• The same filing as a corporationWhere the entity type changes the price, and by how much.
• Which states levy a recurring entity taxFranchise tax and its equivalents: who levies one, what the floor is, and where the record does not resolve the LLC case.
• States that make you buy newspaper spaceFormation publication and DBA publication, who requires it, and what it costs.
• Where a DBA is filed, and where none existsState, county, municipal and no-mechanism regimes across 53 jurisdictions, with county-level fees for 17 states.

Jurisdictions

Fifty states, the District of Columbia, and three territories. Codes shown with the full jurisdiction name available to screen readers. All 53 hub-eligible jurisdictions have a record page. The 1 dashed cell is Guam, for which the registry holds no agency URL of any kind; it links to the coverage report rather than to a stub page.

• AK - Alaska
• AL - Alabama
• AR - Arkansas
• AZ - Arizona
• CA - California
• CO - Colorado
• CT - Connecticut
• DC - District of Columbia
• DE - Delaware
• FL - Florida
• GA - Georgia
• GU - Guam
• HI - Hawaii
• IA - Iowa
• ID - Idaho
• IL - Illinois
• IN - Indiana
• KS - Kansas
• KY - Kentucky
• LA - Louisiana
• MA - Massachusetts
• MD - Maryland
• ME - Maine
• MI - Michigan
• MN - Minnesota
• MO - Missouri
• MS - Mississippi
• MT - Montana
• NC - North Carolina
• ND - North Dakota
• NE - Nebraska
• NH - New Hampshire
• NJ - New Jersey
• NM - New Mexico
• NV - Nevada
• NY - New York
• OH - Ohio
• OK - Oklahoma
• OR - Oregon
• PA - Pennsylvania
• PR - Puerto Rico
• RI - Rhode Island
• SC - South Carolina
• SD - South Dakota
• TN - Tennessee
• TX - Texas
• UT - Utah
• VA - Virginia
• VI - US Virgin Islands
• VT - Vermont
• WA - Washington
• WI - Wisconsin
• WV - West Virginia
• WY - Wyoming

What is held

Publication tier reflects the real state of the repository on 2026-08-09, not an aspiration. One dataset clears the gate. See the review gate for what each tier means and coverage for the full gap map.