Home › State Guides

What Does an LLC Cost in New Jersey?

New Jersey is simple to price and easy to misprice: $100 to form on the current DORES schedule, $75 a year to report, and one owner-count fee that catches larger LLCs by surprise. If a guide quotes you $125 to form, it is quoting last year's schedule.

By the LLCForming research teamFees checked Nov 8, 2026

Year one: what you pay to exist

Year-one cost in New Jersey	Amount
Certificate of Formation, DORES	$100
Form NJ-REG business registration	No separate fee stated by DORES
EIN from the IRS	$0
Operating agreement (you write it, not filed)	$0
Total state cost, year one	$100

That $100 is the complete required state charge for year one. The first $75 annual report is not a year-one cost: it falls on the last day of your anniversary month in the year after formation. Optional extras stay out of the total: expedited service for over-the-counter and fax filings runs $25 per filing, with a same-day fax service fee of $50, a 2-hour service fee of $500 per document, and a 1-hour service fee of $1,000 per document, and a name reservation is $50 if you want one. There is no publication charge and no separate NJ-REG fee in the Division's schedule.

Every year after: the cost of staying alive

Recurring cost in New Jersey	Amount
Annual report, DORES	$75
Partnership filing fee, one or two owners	$0
Partnership filing fee, more than two owners with New Jersey source income or loss	$150 per owner, capped at $250,000
State LLC entity or franchise tax on a pass-through LLC	$0. The partnership filing fee above is the entity-level charge.
Typical recurring total	$75/yr for most small LLCs

The $75 annual report is filed online, and DORES publishes no flat dollar late fee for filing it late. Do not read that as forgiving: the sanction is structural, not a fine. Miss reports for two consecutive years and a domestic LLC's certificate is transferred to an inactive list, while a foreign LLC's certificate may be revoked. Getting back costs real money, set out on the report page: a $75 reinstatement filing fee, the $75 current annual report, and $75 for each delinquent report. File in your anniversary month and the whole question never comes up.

What drives the New Jersey total, year one vs. later

New Jersey's year one is a single line: $100 for the Certificate of Formation, with NJ-REG adding no separate stated fee and no publication step adding a third-party bill. Later years are driven by one flat charge and one conditional charge. The flat charge is the $75 annual report, due every year on the last day of your formation anniversary month, which makes a normal later year cost $75 against a $100 first year. The conditional charge is the Division of Taxation's partnership filing fee, and it is driven by headcount, not revenue: it is $0 for an LLC with one or two owners, and $150 per owner once the LLC has more than two owners and New Jersey source income or loss. A three-owner LLC therefore pays $450 under that fee, plus a $225 installment prepaying half of the next year's fee with its first return. New Jersey stays cheap for the typical small LLC precisely because most LLCs never trip the owner-count trigger.

The partnership filing fee, in plain terms

This is New Jersey's one entity-level tax-side charge for a pass-through LLC, collected by the Division of Taxation on Form NJ-1065. It applies to an entity classified as a partnership for federal income tax purposes, which includes a multi-member LLC that has not elected corporate treatment, only when the entity has more than two owners and income or loss derived from New Jersey sources. "Owner" means any individual, trust, estate, or entity that owned a partnership interest during the year.

Situation	Filing fee
One or two owners, any income	$0
More than two owners, no New Jersey source income or loss	$0
More than two owners, with New Jersey source income or loss	$150 per owner
Maximum fee	$250,000
Example from the Division's own instructions: a 3-owner LLC	$450, plus a $225 installment

The installment is the part everyone misses: an installment payment equal to 50% of the current year's filing fee is also required at the same time, as a prepayment toward the following year. The fee is calculated on Form NJ-1065 and paid with the Partnership Payment Voucher (NJ-1065-V), due on or before the 15th day of the fourth month after the close of the tax year, April 15 for calendar-year filers. An extension of time to file the return does not extend the time to pay the fee. Investment clubs meeting the Division's criteria are exempt. Beyond this fee, a pass-through LLC pays no general New Jersey franchise or entity tax; partnerships with nonresident owners can also have obligations to remit tax on behalf of those owners, which is computed on the owners' allocated income and is not a flat LLC fee.

Run your own version, with an optional registered agent added, in the LLC cost calculator. Every state's year-one and recurring totals sit in one table on the national cost hub, and if a service would act as your agent, the registered agent price tracker follows what that costs at each tracked provider. If you would rather a service handled the filing, the services comparison prices that honestly, renewals included.