incFACTS

Cross-jurisdiction analysis

Where a DBA is filed, and the three states where there is nothing to file

Across 53 jurisdictions, 44 take a doing-business-as filing at state level, 4 take it only at county level, 2 take it at municipal level, and in 3 - Kansas, New Mexico, South Carolina - no general assumed-name registration act exists at all. In those three states the correct answer to "how do I file a DBA" is that there is no such filing, which is a fact no vendor page will tell you.

44State-level regimes
4County-only regimesone filing per county
2Municipal regimes
3No mechanism at allKS, NM, SC
259County fee records17 states
7Awaiting a phone callquestion recorded, answer not
Alaska - Filed with the stateAK Alabama - Filed with the stateAL Arkansas - Filed with the stateAR Arizona - Filed with the stateAZ California - Filed with the countyCA Colorado - Filed with the stateCO Connecticut - Filed with the municipalityCT District of Columbia - Filed with the stateDC Delaware - Filed with the stateDE Florida - Filed with the stateFL Georgia - Filed with the countyGA Guam - Not in the regime datasetGU Hawaii - Filed with the stateHI Iowa - Filed with the stateIA Idaho - Filed with the stateID Illinois - Filed with the stateIL Indiana - Filed with the stateIN Kansas - No mechanism existsKS Kentucky - Filed with the stateKY Louisiana - Filed with the stateLA Massachusetts - Filed with the municipalityMA Maryland - Filed with the stateMD Maine - Filed with the stateME Michigan - Filed with the stateMI Minnesota - Filed with the stateMN Missouri - Filed with the stateMO Mississippi - Filed with the stateMS Montana - Filed with the stateMT North Carolina - Filed with the countyNC North Dakota - Filed with the stateND Nebraska - Filed with the stateNE New Hampshire - Filed with the stateNH New Jersey - Filed with the stateNJ New Mexico - No mechanism existsNM Nevada - Filed with the countyNV New York - Filed with the stateNY Ohio - Filed with the stateOH Oklahoma - Filed with the stateOK Oregon - Filed with the stateOR Pennsylvania - Filed with the statePA Puerto Rico - Filed with the statePR Rhode Island - Filed with the stateRI South Carolina - No mechanism existsSC South Dakota - Filed with the stateSD Tennessee - Filed with the stateTN Texas - Filed with the stateTX Utah - Filed with the stateUT Virginia - Filed with the stateVA US Virgin Islands - Filed with the stateVI Vermont - Filed with the stateVT Washington - Filed with the stateWA Wisconsin - Filed with the stateWI West Virginia - Filed with the stateWV Wyoming - Filed with the stateWY
Filed with the state 44Filed with the county 4Filed with the municipality 2No mechanism exists 3Not in the regime dataset 1
Where a doing-business-as name is filed, 53 jurisdictions.

The three states with no DBA mechanism

A negative finding is only useful if it is grounded. Each of these was established by searching the state's full captured corpus for any assumed-name registration act and finding none, then corroborating against the filing agency's own guidance.

Kansas - there is nothing to file

Pending review

Kansas has no general assumed-name / DBA / fictitious-business-name registration act. Nothing in the Kansas corpus (General Corporation Code, LLC Act, partnership acts, BEST Act, or chapter 81) requires or provides a DBA filing for sole proprietors, partnerships, or entities, and the retrieval manifest records the Kansas Secretary of State's confirmation that state law neither requires nor permits DBA/fictitious-name registration. What does exist is the voluntary Revised Kansas Trademark Act (K.S.A. 81-201 et seq.), under which a person using a trademark or service mark may register the mark with the Secretary of State; 'trade name' is defined in the act but its registration provisions apply to marks.

Filing office
None - no DBA/trade name registry exists in Kansas at state or county level
State fee
n/a
Nearest analogue
There is no DBA filing office in Kansas because there is no DBA registration act. The only adjacent state registry is the Secretary of State's voluntary trademark / service-mark register under the Revised Kansas Trademark Act.

New Mexico - there is nothing to file

Pending review

New Mexico has no general DBA / assumed-name / fictitious-business-name registration statute - no state filing and no county filing is required or provided for sole proprietors or general partnerships operating under an assumed name (corpus regime check, 2026-08-01; the NMSA partnership chapter contains no assumed-name article). What New Mexico does offer is (1) entity-name provisions for registered entities, including a fictitious-name mechanism for foreign corporations whose names are unavailable (NMSA 1978, 53-17-3), and (2) voluntary trademark/service-mark registration with the secretary of state under the Trademark Act, which defines but does not register 'trade names'.

Filing office
None - New Mexico has no DBA/trade name registration at state or county level
State fee
n/a
Nearest analogue
not recorded

South Carolina - there is nothing to file

Pending review

South Carolina has no current general assumed-name / DBA registration statute for sole proprietors or general partnerships. The former general provision - Title 39, Chapter 13 ('Names of Business Establishments'), which required mercantile and industrial establishments to file owner names with the clerk of court and exhibit them on a sign - has been repealed: the current official Title 39 chapter index lists chapters 1 through 79 with no Chapter 13. The only surviving assumed-name filing is for limited partnerships, which file an assumed name certificate with the Secretary of State under ยง 33-42-45.

Filing office
None at state level - SC Secretary of State explicitly does not register DBAs/trade names; no statewide assumed-name statute
State fee
n/a
Nearest analogue
There is no current general DBA filing office in South Carolina - the repealed chapter's clerk-of-court filing no longer exists (no Chapter 13 appears in the current Title 39 index). The one surviving assumed-name filing, for limited partnerships, is made with the Secretary of State.

County-level filing: 259 records across 17 states

In a county regime there is no single state answer, and the fee is whatever that county's clerk charges. The record holds 259 county rows: 6 as a plain number, 183 as a structured string because the county prices per name and per registrant rather than per filing, and 70 with no published fee at all. 7 carry an explicit unresolved question and the phone number to resolve it.

County DBA fee coverage by state
State Counties held With a feeNo published fee Unresolved
TX Texas564881
CA California434211
GA Georgia312833
NC North Carolina282800
VA Virginia260260
FL Florida240240
NV Nevada171611
NY New York131300
MN Minnesota4040
DE Delaware3300
MA Massachusetts3210
NJ New Jersey3300
CT Connecticut2200
IA Iowa2200
MI Michigan2200
AL Alabama1010
AR Arkansas1011
$22 $45 $68 $90 Trinity $10 Lassen $20 Modoc $20 Orange $23 Madera $25 Riverside $66 San Francisco $67 San Luis Obispo $73 Ventura $76 San Bernardino $90
California fictitious business name statements: the five cheapest and five dearest counties in the record (base fee, one name and one registrant)

Why a single "California DBA fee" does not exist

The record holds 43 California counties. The base fee for one business name and one registrant runs from $10 in Trinity County to $90 in San Bernardino County - a 9x spread inside one state - and almost every county then charges again per additional name and per additional registrant, so two filers in the same county can pay different amounts for the same filing. Any page quoting one number for California is wrong for most of California.

Provenance - DBA regimes and county feesPending review

Citation withheld: this record does not yet carry a review status. Regime records carry an official statutory URL and are one review pass from publication; the county rows are the weakest-cited part of the repository.

Regimes
53 jurisdictions
Legal profiles
53 jurisdictions, 316 citation-bearing records, 209 FAQs
County rows
259 across 17 states
Retrieved
2026-07-31
Review
regimes: no review status recorded. Legal profiles: provisionally reviewed.

County clerk fee schedules change on local budget cycles and are frequently posted as a PDF with no change history. This is the dataset most in need of a monitored source per row, and the coverage page says so.