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What Does an LLC Cost in North Carolina?

North Carolina is cheap to start and expensive to keep: $125 to form, then $200 every year for the annual report, one of the highest recurring filing fees in this guide. Filed on time by paper, that $200 is the whole recurring state bill for a default LLC.

By the LLCForming research teamFees checked Nov 8, 2026

Year one: what you pay to exist

Year-one cost in North Carolina	Amount
Articles of Organization (Form L-01), Secretary of State	$125
Newspaper publication	$0. North Carolina has no publication requirement.
EIN from the IRS	$0
Operating agreement (you write it, not filed)	$0
Total state cost, year one	$125

That $125 is the complete published state charge in year one. The first annual report is not due until April 15 of the following year, there is no general state business license fee, and the formation fee schedule states $125 flat for online and paper filing. Optional state charges, only if you use them, are a $10 name reservation for 120 days and expedited processing at $100 for 24-hour service or $200 for same-day service. A standard Assumed Business Name certificate, if the LLC will trade under a different name, costs $26 at the county Register of Deeds. A commercial registered agent, if you hire one, adds that provider's own yearly private price on top.

Every year after: the cost of staying alive

Recurring cost in North Carolina	Amount
Annual report, filed on paper by April 15	$200
Annual report, filed online by credit card	$203 (includes a $3 electronic filing fee)
Annual report, filed online by ACH	$202 (includes a $2 electronic filing fee)
Monetary late fee for a late annual report	$0. None is published. The sanction is dissolution, not a charge.
Franchise tax on a default LLC taxed as a partnership	$0
Typical recurring total	$200/yr on paper, $203/yr online by card

The $200 report is routinely mistaken for a tax. It is not. It is a Secretary of State filing fee that keeps the LLC's public record and active status current, owed to the Business Registration Division, not to the Department of Revenue. The Department of Revenue's own guidance is that LLCs are not subject to franchise tax, and the default LLC's income passes through to its members. Only an LLC that elects to be taxed as a corporation enters the corporate income and franchise tax system, where the franchise tax minimum is $200. That election is income and net-worth based, so it stays out of the flat totals here. Sales and use tax registration and employer withholding turn on the business's activity and payroll, through the Department of Revenue, on their own schedules.

What drives the North Carolina total, year one vs. later

North Carolina inverts the Texas pattern. Year one is modest: $125 for Form L-01 and nothing else owed to the state, because the first annual report waits until April 15 of the year after formation. Later years are where North Carolina makes its money. The $200 annual report repeats every single year, which makes a normal later year cost $75 more than the year the LLC was formed, and makes North Carolina's five-year state bill heavier than states with a higher filing fee and a cheap report. The online totals deserve a clear statement, because they are the numbers most filers actually pay: $203 by credit card and $202 by ACH, each the $200 report fee plus a small electronic filing fee the Secretary of State discloses for annual reports. Nothing else flat joins the bill for a default LLC. There is no franchise tax on an LLC taxed as a partnership, no publication charge, and no general license fee. So the North Carolina total is driven by one recurring line and one discipline: pay $200 every April 15, or eventually pay $100 to reinstate plus $200 for every report you skipped.

North Carolina fees beyond the annual report

The $200 report dominates the North Carolina schedule, but the rest of the Secretary of State's LLC fee list is mostly small numbers that appear at specific life events: qualifying from another state, changing your agent, trading under another name, and closing. The verified figures:

Item	Figure
Foreign LLC Certificate of Authority (Form L-09)	$250
Application for Reinstatement after administrative dissolution (Form L-08)	$100, plus each delinquent annual report at $200
Articles of Dissolution (Form L-07)	$30
Assumed Business Name certificate, county Register of Deeds	$26 for the first 15 pages, plus $4 per additional page
Name reservation, 120 days, nonrenewable	$10
Statement of Change of Registered Agent or Office	$5, with the new agent's written consent required
Foreign LLC Certificate of Withdrawal (Form L-14)	$10
Amended Certificate of Authority (Form L-10)	$50

Read the reinstatement line carefully, because it is the real North Carolina late fee even though the state never calls it one. There is no per-year penalty added to a late report. Instead, a dissolved LLC pays the $100 reinstatement application and then pays every delinquent annual report in full at $200 each, $203 each if filed online by card. Miss three reports and the cure is $100 plus $600 in back reports, before you count the deals and accounts an inactive LLC could not properly touch while it was dissolved. Against that arithmetic, the $200 on-time report is the bargain it does not feel like in April.

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.