SHEET CA-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

California

Form an LLC in California as a non-resident: the verified state fee, the duty that follows you every year, the agent rule, and the traps that are specific to this state — each figure sourced on this sheet.

State formation fee: $70
Total with Formation Complete: $469
Annual duty cost: $810/yr
Report pattern: Every two years, by the last day of the anniversary (formation) month. The filing window runs f

On fee alone, California is the 13th cheapest of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas to form in. Fee is the smallest part of the decision — the duty below is the part that repeats.

What it takes here

You form a California LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the California Secretary of State, Business Programs Division. The state fee is $70, collected by us at cost as a pass-through — the state keeps its fee; our $399 is separate and labelled as ours on the pricing page. California has no filing titled 'annual report' - the recurring filing is the Statement of Information. Fee ($20, Form LLC-12, due within 90 days of registration and every two years thereafter) is from the SOS fee schedule page for California domestic LLC forms. Agent rules are from the Secretary of State's business entities FAQ.

Name rules

Your company name must contain a limited-liability designator — “Limited Liability Company” or an accepted abbreviation such as “LLC” — and must be distinguishable from names already on the records of the California Secretary of State, Business Programs Division. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in California as in most states. For a non-resident there is a second, quieter naming point: the name on the Articles of Organization is the name the IRS will print on your EIN confirmation (the CP 575), and it is the name your bank and payment processors will match against your documents. Pick the final name before filing; amending it later is a second state filing with a second fee.

Publication

California imposes no newspaper-publication requirement on a new LLC. The publication duty that founders read about belongs to a small set of states — New York, Arizona and Nebraska are the ones in this Atlas — and it does not travel with you if you form here.

Forms, office and processing

The filing office is the California Secretary of State, Business Programs Division. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most California filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Secretary of State publishes no fixed standard turnaround — it posts live Processing Dates for Business Entities instead, and sells guaranteed windows: 24-hour filing service for $350, Same-Day for $750 (received by 9:30 a.m., response by 4 p.m.), and 4-Hour for $500 for precleared documents dropped off in Sacramento. (Processing source: the office’s own page — checked 2026-11-05.) What we commit to in writing, before anything is filed, is the fee, the duty and the due pattern on this sheet.

The foreign-registration warning

Forming in California does not licence you to operate everywhere. If your LLC will have an office, employees, inventory or a sustained physical presence in another state, that state will generally require foreign qualification there — a second registration, a second agent and a second set of duties, on top of this one. Non-residents most often trip on this by forming in a low-fee state while living-adjacent operations, warehousing or staff sit somewhere else. The state of formation should follow the business, not the other way round; the diagnostic on this site asks where your customers and operations are for exactly this reason.

Your registered agent in California

Agent for service of process: an individual who resides in California, or a registered corporate agent under Corporations Code Section 1505. A corporate agent must be active, in good standing, authorized to engage in business in California, and have a current Corporate Registered Agent (1505) Application on file with the Secretary of State. A business entity cannot act as its own agent for service of process; an individual agent's name and physical street address are public record.

Formation Complete includes the registered agent for year one. From year two the renewal is $149 a year — the same figure on every sheet in this Atlas, because the agent’s job (a real address, a person or service that can receive process, and forwarding that actually reaches a founder overseas) costs the same diligence in Sacramento as anywhere else. If you move the agent elsewhere, the duty calendar below does not move with it: the report duty belongs to the LLC, not to the agent.

Duty calendar

Statement of Information — biennial for LLCs ($20), annual for corporations ($25); $800/yr minimum franchise tax.

Filled cell = a month in which this state’s duty falls due.

The recurring duty is the line that decides what California costs you in year three, not just year one. Statement of Information — biennial for LLCs ($20), annual for corporations ($25); $800/yr minimum franchise tax. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $810 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If the duty is missed altogether. Failure to file the required Statement of Information may result in suspension or forfeiture of the entity's powers, rights and privileges by the Franchise Tax Board (per the SOS Statements of Information filing tips).

Cost of ownership

Formation Complete $399 one-time + state fee at cost; agent renewal $149/yr from year 2; state duty annualised from the verified figure on this sheet.
Horizon	Total paid	What it contains
Year 1	$469	$399 package + $70 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$1,428	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $810 state duty
By end of year 5	$4,305	Year 1 + four renewals + four years of state duty

Compare that five-year figure, not the formation fee, against any other state you are considering — the compare tray in the Atlas does it side by side for up to three states. A state that is $100 cheaper to form and $300 a year heavier to keep is the expensive state.

Where California sits in this Atlas: 13th of 49 by formation fee ($70), and 49th by the five-year cost of ownership ($4,305). The year-one total of $469 is the $399 package with the state fee passed through at cost; after that, the meter runs at the $149 yearly agent renewal plus the state duty of $810 a year. The state duty itself makes up 75.3% of the five-year total; the rest is the package and the registered-agent renewal. That sits above the Atlas median five-year cost of $1,260. Judged on five years instead of filing day, California is a state whose keeping costs deserve a second look before you file — and that longer view is the one a non-resident owner actually lives with.

Non-resident specifics in California

California is the Atlas’s clearest case of the formation fee lying by omission. The $70 articles fee buys you an LLC that owes the $800 annual minimum franchise tax to the Franchise Tax Board every year it exists, plus a biennial Statement of Information ($20), plus — if your revenue grows — the graduated LLC fee on California-sourced income. And the trap that catches non-residents most often: forming in a cheaper state while actually operating from California does not avoid any of this. A foreign LLC transacting intrastate business in California must qualify with the Secretary of State and owes the same $800. Choose California because your business is there, with the $800 priced in from year one.

The federal layer, which no state choice removes. A single-member LLC owned by a non-resident is, by default, a disregarded entity for US federal income tax — and since 2017 that status carries an annual information duty: Form 5472 attached to a pro-forma Form 1120, due each year the LLC exists, reporting reportable transactions with its foreign owner (funding the company counts). The penalty for a missing or late Form 5472 starts at $25,000. Multi-member LLCs are taxed as partnerships by default and file Form 1065, with their own withholding questions when US-source income reaches foreign partners. None of this is a reason not to form; all of it is a reason to form with the calendar already drawn. The EIN guide on this site walks the Form SS-4 route for founders with no SSN or ITIN, the CP 575 you receive, and the 5472 duty in full.

Address and banking reality. Your California LLC’s address on the state record is its registered office — the agent’s address — which is a service address, not your trading address, and should never be sold to you as one. Banks and payment processors will ask for the beneficial owner’s foreign address and passport-grade identification, and many will ask why the company sits in California; “my operations and customers are there” is an answer, a fee table is not. Form where the answer is true.

Plot my route — the 5-question diagnostic Compare California in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — California Secretary of State, Business Programs Division: https://www.sos.ca.gov/business-programs/business-entities/forms/corporations-california-domestic · duty record: https://www.sos.ca.gov/business-programs/business-entities/statements · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.