SHEET VA-01 · FORMATION DOSSIER

Virginia

Form an LLC in Virginia 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: $100
Total with Formation Complete: $499
Annual duty cost: $50/yr
Report pattern: Last day of the month the LLC was organized or registered in Virginia

On fee alone, Virginia is the 25th 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 Virginia LLC by filing Articles of Organization with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Clerk’s Office. The state fee is $100, 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. The Virginia LLC annual registration fee is $50 on the State Corporation Commission's page, NOT $25 ($25 is the nonstock corporation fee). LLCs file NO annual report with the SCC; the annual registration fee is the LLC's recurring obligation. Authority is the State Corporation Commission (SCC), not a Secretary of State.

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 Virginia State Corporation Commission, Clerk’s Office. A name that implies a regulated activity (banking, insurance, trust) or a government affiliation invites rejection or a consent requirement in Virginia 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

Virginia 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 Virginia State Corporation Commission, Clerk’s Office. The formation document is the Articles of Organization; most Virginia filings can be made online, and online filings are acknowledged faster than paper ones as a rule. The State Corporation Commission's LLC FAQs split the clock by how you file: online with no attachment, acceptance follows checkout in real time; attach your own Articles and the Clerk's Office review adds about five business days. Online expedited services guarantee a next-business-day or same-business-day response for an added fee. (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 Virginia 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 Virginia

Must maintain a registered agent and registered office in Virginia; the SCC mails the annual registration fee assessment to the registered agent at the registered office on file two months before the due date, and the agent must forward it to the company (SCC page)

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 Richmond 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 registration — Last day of the month the LLC was organized or registered in Virginia — $50.

This state sets no recurring report date for an LLC.

The recurring duty is the line that decides what Virginia costs you in year three, not just year one. Annual registration — Last day of the month the LLC was organized or registered in Virginia — $50. Priced into the five-year table on this sheet at $50 a year (annualised), it is the difference between a cheap formation and a cheap company.

If it is late. Penalty for LLCs (all business types other than stock and nonstock corporations) is $25 if payment is not received by the due date (SCC Annual Registration Fees page)

If the duty is missed altogether. Cancellation on the last day of the third month following the due date if the annual registration fee is not paid (SCC page, e.g. April due date, cancellation after July)

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	$499	$399 package + $100 state fee; agent year 1 included
By end of year 2	$698	Year 1 + $149 agent renewal + $50 state duty
By end of year 5	$1,295	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.

Virginia in Atlas context: the $100 formation fee ranks 25th of the 49 jurisdictions in this Atlas, and the five-year cost of $1,295 ranks 27th. Year one is $499 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 $50 a year. The state duty itself makes up 15.4% 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 Virginia over the full five years rather than the first afternoon.

Non-resident specifics in Virginia

Virginia’s recurring state cost for a domestic LLC is the duty on this sheet — Annual registration — Last day of the month the LLC was organized or registered in Virginia — $50. 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 Virginia 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 Virginia; “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 Virginia in the Atlas

Sources: formation fee and duty verified against official state sources — Virginia State Corporation Commission, Clerk’s Office: http://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title13.1/chapter9/article2/ · duty record: http://www.scc.virginia.gov/businesses/business-faqs/annual-registration-fees/ · fees verified 2026-11-03, duties verified 2026-11-04. Federal figures (Form 5472 penalty) per IRS instructions for Form 5472.