SHEET NY-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

New York

Form an LLC in New York 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: $200
Total with Formation Complete: $599
Annual duty cost: $4.50/yr
Report pattern: Biennial Statement filing period is the calendar month in which the original Articles of Organi

On fee alone, New York is the 44th 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 New York LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the New York Department of State, Division of Corporations. The state fee is $200, 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. One New York quirk matters here: LLCs file a BIENNIAL (not annual) Statement under LLC Law Sec. 301(e), $9 fee, in the month the company originally filed. The Department of State attaches no dissolution consequence to a past-due statement — the company remains active until it dissolves for another reason.

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 New York Department of State, Division of Corporations. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in New York 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.

The publication step

New York’s publication rule is the heaviest formation after-cost in this Atlas. Under § 206 of the New York LLC Law, a new LLC must publish a copy of its articles of organization (or a notice of formation) in two newspapers — one daily, one weekly — designated by the county clerk of the county where the LLC’s office is located, once a week for six consecutive weeks, within 120 days of formation, and then file a certificate of publication with the Department of State with a $50 filing fee. The newspapers’ charges are not state fees and vary sharply by county: modest in many upstate counties, and historically the highest in the country in New York County (Manhattan). Budget for the publication itself before you choose New York on the strength of its $9 biennial statement — the statement is nearly free; the publication is not.

Forms, office and processing

The filing office is the New York Department of State, Division of Corporations. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most New York filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Department of State publishes no routine turnaround for Articles of Organization. Its published clocks are the Expedited Handling tiers printed on the Articles form itself: $25 per document for processing within 24 hours, $75 for same-day processing, and $150 for processing within 2 hours. (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 New York 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 New York

No separate registered agent is required: the LLC must designate the New York Secretary of State as its agent for service of process and keep a current address to which the Secretary of State mails/forwards process (LLC Law Sec. 301; DOS biennial statement sets forth that address). Designating an additional registered agent is optional (LLC Law Sec. 302)

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 Albany 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

Biennial statement — $9 every 2 years (LLCs also have a newspaper publication requirement after formation).

This state sets no recurring report date for an LLC.

The recurring duty is the line that decides what New York costs you in year three, not just year one. Biennial statement — $9 every 2 years (LLCs also have a newspaper publication requirement after formation). Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $4.5 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. The Department of State publishes no late fee for this statement; a past-due entity is reflected as past due in DOS records and on any Certificate of Status, which may prevent certain business transactions (DOS)

If the duty is missed altogether. None

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	$599	$399 package + $200 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$752.5	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $4.5 state duty
By end of year 5	$1,213	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 New York sits in this Atlas: 44th of 49 by formation fee ($200), and 22nd by the five-year cost of ownership ($1,213). The year-one total of $599 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 $4.50 a year. The state duty itself makes up 1.5% of the five-year total; the rest is the package and the registered-agent renewal. That sits below the Atlas median five-year cost of $1,260. Judged on five years instead of filing day, New York is one of the cheaper states to keep — and that longer view is the one a non-resident owner actually lives with.

Non-resident specifics in New York

New York has no annual franchise tax on an LLC as such; the recurring state charges are the $9 biennial statement and an annual filing fee for LLCs taxed as partnerships, which is income-based and zero for many small out-of-state operations. The real New York cost sits at formation: the § 206 newspaper publication described above. If your customers, counterparties or investors are in New York, that one-off cost may be worth paying once; if they are not, New York is an expensive postcard.

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 New York 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 New York; “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 New York in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — New York Department of State, Division of Corporations: https://dos.ny.gov/certificate-incorporation-domestic-business-corporation · duty record: https://dos.ny.gov/biennial-statements-business-corporations-and-limited-liability-companies · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.