SHEET NV-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Nevada

Form an LLC in Nevada 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: $425
Total with Formation Complete: $824
Annual duty cost: $350/yr
Report pattern: Annual list due on or before the last day of the month in which the anniversary date of organiz

On fee alone, Nevada is the 48th 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 Nevada LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Nevada Secretary of State, Commercial Recordings Division. The state fee is $425, 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. Quirk verified in statute text read: $150 is the Annual List fee only (NRS 86.263(4)); the $200 state business license (NRS 76.100, read at leg.state.nv.us NRS-076) is a separate component, for $350/yr total recurring.

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 Nevada Secretary of State, Commercial Recordings Division. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in Nevada 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

Nevada 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 Nevada Secretary of State, Commercial Recordings Division. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Nevada filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. Through SilverFlume, most Nevada online transactions are processed the same day at no extra charge; the Secretary of State also sells 24-hour expedited service for $125, 2-hour for $500 and 1-hour for $1,000, while paper filings follow the office's dated processing queue. (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 Nevada 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 Nevada

Registered agent required (NRS 86.231, 'Registered agent required; address of registered office'); agent regime governed by NRS Chapter 77 (commercial and noncommercial registered agents) with a Nevada registered office address

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 Carson City 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

Annual list + state business license renewal — due the last day of your anniversary month — $350/yr (LLC).

Pattern cell = the duty follows your formation anniversary or fiscal year rather than a fixed statewide date — the date is set by your own formation record.

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Nevada costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual list + state business license renewal — due the last day of your anniversary month — $350/yr (LLC). Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $350 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. $75 penalty added to the list fee for default (NRS 86.272(3)); a separate $100 penalty applies under NRS Chapter 76 for late state business license renewal. The business license itself is $200/yr for an LLC (NRS 76.100), so total recurring state cost is $150 list + $200 license = $350

If the duty is missed altogether. Entity is in default if it neglects to file/pay; on the first day of the first anniversary of the month following the month in which the filing was required, the charter is revoked and the right to transact business is forfeited (NRS 86.274(2))

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	$824	$399 package + $425 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$1,323	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $350 state duty
By end of year 5	$2,820	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.

Nevada in Atlas context: the $425 formation fee ranks 48th of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas, and the five-year cost of $2,820 ranks 46th. Year one is $824 all-in — the $399 Formation Complete package plus the state fee charged at cost. In years two to five the recurring charges are the $149 agent renewal and the state duty of $350 a year. The state duty itself makes up 49.6% 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. The five-year figure is the comparison that matters: a state can look cheap on filing day and still be the expensive company to own, so this sheet prices Nevada over the full five years rather than the first afternoon.

Non-resident specifics in Nevada

Nevada’s $425 formation stack and $350 each year after (initial/annual list of managers or members plus the state business licence) make it the most expensive routine jurisdiction in this Atlas to simply exist in. What that buys is a mature commercial-recordings system and no state corporate income tax — it does not buy privacy in any absolute sense, since the annual list names managers or managing members to the state. Price Nevada on its full $350-a-year carrying cost, not on the marketing of any “Nevada advantage”.

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 Nevada 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 Nevada; “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 Nevada in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Nevada Secretary of State, Commercial Recordings Division: https://www.nvsilverflume.gov/ · duty record: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nRs/NRS-086.html · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.