Editorial Team & Research Standards

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

Every factual claim published on this site is verified against primary government sources before it goes live — each state's Secretary of State website, the IRS, and state Department of Revenue publications. Where a figure comes from a state's own filing portal, that portal is the source of record, not a third-party summary.

• Filing fees are verified against the official state filing portal for each state, not aggregated from other formation sites.
• Processing times are cross-referenced against multiple state sources, since published turnaround times and observed turnaround times often differ.
• Tax rates are verified against current state revenue department publications. Where a state is mid-way through a phased rate change, we publish the rate in effect for the current tax year.
• Compliance deadlines and annual fees are checked against the filing agency that actually collects them — which is not always the Secretary of State.
• Last Reviewed dates on each page reflect the most recent verification pass, not the date the page was first written.

When we find an error, we correct it at the data layer so every affected page updates at once, rather than patching individual pages.

This site earns affiliate commissions from formation services, including Northwest Registered Agent and Doola. 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.