Editorial Team & Research Standards

The American LLC Research Team tracks LLC formation requirements, state filing fees, compliance deadlines, annual report due dates, and state tax obligations across all 50 states.

Our state guides and our state-by-business guides (for example, a cleaning business in Texas) are generated from a structured dataset rather than written one page at a time. Each state has one record holding its filing fee, annual report fee and due date, name reservation fee, franchise or minimum tax, publication rules and agency links. Each business type has one record holding its licensing notes and our cost estimates. A page combines the state record with the business record, so a correction to a record updates every page that uses it.

State fee records are checked against the official agency source for that state, and each record stores the source URL, the date it was last checked and which fees were confirmed. Every state page shows that date and source in a Sources section. Where we have not yet been able to confirm a state's fees against the official source, the page says so instead of showing a verification date.

Startup costs, insurance costs, job rates, revenue ranges and break-even figures are our estimates of typical ranges. They are labeled as estimates and are not taken from government sources.

• Filing and annual fees are checked against the state filing agency's own fee schedule, statute or form, not against other formation sites.
• Tax rates are checked against state revenue department publications or the state statute. Where a state is partway through a phased rate change, we show the rate for the current tax year.
• Federal rules (EIN, self-employment tax, beneficial ownership reporting, federal licenses) are checked against the IRS, FinCEN and the issuing federal agency.
• Processing times are approximate. Many states do not publish a guaranteed turnaround, so treat them as a guide.
• Dates. A page's Last Reviewed date changes only when its content or the data behind it was actually changed or re-checked.

This site earns affiliate commissions from formation services, including Northwest Registered Agent, ZenBusiness, Doola and Tailor Brands. If you form an LLC through a link on this site, we may be paid a commission at no additional cost to you.

That commercial relationship does not influence factual content. Filing fees, processing times, tax rates, and compliance requirements are reported as found in official sources regardless of which services we recommend — including when the accurate answer is that you do not need a paid service at all and can file directly with your state for the state fee alone.

Compliance and tax content is researched across two tracks, each with its own lead researcher. Bylines are applied consistently across the site so you can see which research track a given page came from.

If you find a figure on this site that does not match your state's official source, tell us and we will verify and correct it. Reach us through the contact page. Corrections are applied at the data layer and propagate to every page that uses the figure.