Reference · North Carolina

North Carolina LLC requirements

Every requirement we've verified for a domestic LLC in North Carolina, with the source for each. For the plain-English cost answer, use the cost calculator.

Filing agencyNorth Carolina Secretary of State, Business Registration Division
Formation filing fee$125
Filing fee notes$125 for Articles of Organization (Form L-01), confirmed directly from the official NC SOS PDF form.
Standard processingNot confirmed.
Expedited optionsNot confirmed (NC SOS offers paid expedited processing; amount unverified).
Periodic reportAnnual Report
Report frequencyannual
Report fee$200
Report deadlineDue April 15 of each year FOLLOWING the year the LLC was created. $200 paper; online adds a transaction fee ($202 ACH, $203 credit card).
Late penaltyNot confirmed from an official source.
Administrative dissolutionNot confirmed (NC SOS administrative-dissolution page could not be located).
State taxNorth Carolina's corporate franchise tax applies to C corporations and any LLC electing corporate treatment; a standard pass-through NC LLC is not subject to it. Based on general NCDOR scope, not a fetched page.
Minimum state taxNone
Newspaper publicationNot required
Registered agent requiredYes
First-year minimum$125
Cross-checked Checked Source: sosnc.gov All sources

Confidence

What we're less sure about

Cross-checked, pending a second verification pass

  • $200 annual report excluded from year one because it falls in the second calendar year.
  • NOTE: $200/year is among the highest recurring report fees in the dataset - good comparison content.
  • Late penalty and dissolution consequences unconfirmed (sosnc.gov URLs returned errors).

Provenance

Sources

Every figure above traces to one of these. If a state changes a fee and we haven't caught it, tell us — we log corrections publicly.

  • sosnc.gov — https://www.sosnc.gov/webfiles/documents/forms/Business_Registration/limited_liability_companies/articles_of_organization.pdf
  • sosnc.gov — https://www.sosnc.gov/divisions/business_registration/annual_report_due_dates