South Carolina

State formation fee

$110

Total with Formation Complete

$509

Annual duty cost

$0/yr

Report pattern

No annual report with the Secretary of State, and no SCDOR annual report/license fee for an LLC

On fee alone, South Carolina is the 28th 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 South Carolina LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the South Carolina Secretary of State, Business Filings Division. The state fee is $110, 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. It also states: an LLC taxed as a corporation must complete the CL-1 Initial Annual Report of Corporations and submit it to SCDOR within 60 days of commencing business or using capital in SC, and must file SC1120/SC1120S; a multi-member LLC not taxed as a corporation is taxed as a partnership and a single-member LLC not taxed as a corporation is disregarded. SOS FAQ confirms corporations (not LLCs) submit director names on annual reports filed with the Department of Revenue.

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 South Carolina Secretary of State, Business Filings Division. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in South Carolina 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

South Carolina 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 South Carolina Secretary of State, Business Filings Division. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most South Carolina filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The Secretary of State publishes no standard processing-time range for Articles of Organization on its Business Filings pages (checked 2026-11-05) and offers no expedited tier — so this sheet prints no day-count for South Carolina. (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 South Carolina 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 South Carolina

Per S.C. Code § 33-44-108 (Title 33, Chapter 44, official scstatehouse.gov text): an LLC and a foreign LLC authorized to do business in SC shall designate and continuously maintain in SC (1) an office, which need not be a place of business, and (2) an agent and the street address of the agent for service of process. The agent must be an individual resident of SC, a domestic corporation, another LLC, or a foreign corporation or foreign LLC authorized to do business in SC.

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 Columbia 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

No annual or biennial report for LLCs — the state imposes no recurring report duty on a domestic LLC (keep the registered agent and registered office current instead).

1. Jan
2. Feb
3. Mar
4. Apr
5. May
6. Jun
7. Jul
8. Aug
9. Sep
10. Oct
11. Nov
12. Dec

This state sets no recurring report date for an LLC.

This state sets no recurring report for a domestic LLC, which is why the duty-cost figure on this sheet is $0 a year. That is not the same as no duties at all: the registered agent must be maintained continuously, the federal Form 5472 duty below applies to foreign-owned single-member LLCs wherever they are formed, and dissolving or neglecting the entity still leaves a record to clean up.

If it is late. No SOS/DOR annual report penalty for a standard (pass-through) LLC. Exception: an LLC that elects corporate tax treatment must file the CL-1 initial report and then the corporate return with Schedule D annual report and annual license fee like a corporation — see notes.

If the duty is missed altogether. No dissolution for a missing SOS annual report (none exists). SCDOR/SCSOS reinstatement rules still apply to LLCs administratively dissolved on other grounds; nonprofit corporations and LLCs must reinstate within two years of administrative dissolution per the SOS FAQ.

Cost of ownership

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.

South Carolina in Atlas context: the $110 formation fee ranks 28th of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas, and the five-year cost of $1,105 ranks 11th. Year one is $509 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 no recurring state duty at all — the state charges nothing to keep the company on the register. Not one dollar of that five-year total is state duty — the recurring part is entirely the registered-agent renewal. That sits below 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 South Carolina over the full five years rather than the first afternoon.

Non-resident specifics in South Carolina

South Carolina’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — No annual or biennial report for LLCs — the state imposes no recurring report duty on a domestic LLC (keep the registered agent and registered office…. Two cautions decide whether that stays the whole story. First, tax follows activity, not paperwork: if your customers, property or people are in another state, that state can require foreign qualification there and tax the activity there, whatever this sheet says. Second, an LLC is a state-law shell around a federal tax position: a foreign-owned single-member LLC is disregarded for federal income tax by default, which is exactly the status that carries the Form 5472 duty described in the non-resident section below — the state choice does not change it.

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 South Carolina 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 South Carolina; “my operations and customers are there” is an answer, a fee table is not. Form where the answer is true.

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — South Carolina Secretary of State, Business Filings Division: https://businessfilings.sc.gov/BusinessFiling/Home/DownloadForms?pdfCategoryId=1 · duty record: https://dor.sc.gov/business-income-taxes/corporate/corporate-faqs · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.