New York LLC Publication Requirement
Meet Your New York LLC Publication Requirement for Under $200!
Section 206 of the New York State Limited Liability Company Law requires that anyone forming an LLC in New York State or registering an out-of-state LLC to do business in NY, must publish a notice of that formation or registration in two separate newspapers. The newspapers must be located in the same county where the LLC’s “office” resides. Upon publishing, the newspapers provide the business with an Affidavit of Publication, which can then be sent to the New York Division of Corporations along with a Certificate of Publication…
By hiring us as their New York registered agent service, many of our clients list our commercial address as their office address in order to publish in Albany County and save thousands of dollars in publication costs.
When hiring us to form your New York LLC or be your registered agent, we list our county address as yours, and thus you can publish in our two papers in Albany which will cost you under $200 TOTAL in publication fees. For reference, people in New York City pay upwards of $1500 to publish.
Even if your main business operations will be in NYC or anywhere in the state with high publication costs, there’s no reason to list that address as the county for publication reasons. We’re talking about an archaic requirement from many decades ago that no longer makes sense in our modern digital world — nonetheless, New York LLC publication requirements still exist.
The Facts About New York LLC Publishing:
You’re supposed to publish in two newspapers within 120 days of forming or registering an LLC.
You’re supposed to publish for six weeks.
One newspaper can be a weekly publication (cheaper and smaller; think oddball newspaper you see at a small grocery store).
One newspaper needs to be a daily publication (more expensive; think the main town newspaper).
You’re supposed to publish in the county of your “Office.” There are no court rulings defining what exactly that means, so anyone saying it absolutely means this or that is full of crap and more than likely selling you something. Many people list our address as their address in Albany County to publish for thousands less than more expensive newspapers.
There are specific things you need to say in the newspaper. Think as if you were listing something for sale in the classifieds twenty years ago or posting a garage sale ad when the newspapers were relevant. It’s the same thing. You CAN abbreviate your ad though. Many people unfortunately overspend dramatically by being too wordy. We have a short template accepted by the New York Secretary of State and Division of Corporations for 10,000+ clients. The bare bones you have to say in the newspaper ad is:
- Name of the LLC
- Date the state gave you on your completed filing
- The county you want to list
- Street address you want to list
- That you’re okay with the NY SOS being designated for service of process and where the NY SOS can mail notices to (this is where you list us)
- When the LLC is set to dissolve (if it is)
- Who the registered agent is (i.e. us)
- The purpose of the LLC
After you get done with your official New York LLC publishing, the newspaper will provide an Affidavit of Publication, and you send that to the New York Division of Corporations with a Certificate of Publication that carries a $50 filing fee.
It used to be that an LLC couldn’t carry on a lawsuit unless it was published. The legislators, instead of abolishing this absurdity, clarified that an LLC can operate in court if it’s in court without publication, but that the LLC will be suspended and lose its ability to transact business in New York. BUT there is no mechanism to actually make an LLC lose its ability to transact business in New York. The Division of Corporations does not actively mark LLCs as inactive for failure to publish their LLC. So the new laws sound more scary, but fail to have the teeth to really do much of anything other than sound scary.
Failure to publish your LLC does not ruin the liability protection your LLC is supposed to have.
If an LLC is suspended for failing to publish, it can publish at any time and fix it, and it’s laughably like it never was a problem. The only downside here is if you’re doing business with someone in NY they may be difficult and want to know you’ve published. If you’re about to land a huge deal and you can’t show proof of publication, it will take about nine weeks to finish it and show that client proof. This is the only real reason people fulfill the NY LLC publishing requirements.
Well, as you can tell, this absurdity has no real explanation other than bad government being bad government. There’s no excuse for it. It is what it is, so why not save $1000?
Here’s How You Can Save Yourself More Than a $1000 Forming an LLC in New York:
We can file your Articles of Organization and have your NY LLC formed for only $349 total. That includes the Articles of Organization filing, NY LLC operating agreement, initial resolutions, NY LLC membership certificates, one year of our registered agent service, and use of our address for publication purposes.
We’ll be your New York registered agent for only $49 per year after that, or you can cancel our services without any kind of cancellation fee, the best price in the industry.
Once you’re signed up, you’ll have access to Legal Notification Templates in your online account. The NY LLC publication templates can be sent to the two newspapers in our county to meet your LLC publication requirement. When we form your LLC, you can use our address as the location of your business office, no matter where your company is located. We provide the shortest and cheapest template, along with how to order from the newspapers. We get NY LLCs completed in basically 1-2 days depending on the time of day you place an order.
After the newspapers are done with the publications, they send us proof of the publication. We upload this into your account, and you send in the proof of publication filing to the New York Division of Corporations. There’s a specific form you send in with the print out of the newspaper receipt that the newspapers send you and us. This form is called a New York Certificate of Publication. It’s also in your online account at all times.
You’re Done!
So what’s the rub? Well, you hired us to be your registered agent. We charge $49 a year.
So you have a couple options. If you don’t like having us as your registered agent, you can file a change of address form called a New York Certificate of Change. In full disclosure, this form costs $30 to file. Most people do not file this.
There are a lot of reasons to use our registered agent service. Mainly, when you list your address on your company filing with the New York Secretary of State, you create a permanent public record of where you’ve lived and had your business. For $49 a year, your company shows stability year after year and ten years from now, your competitors, your clients, your vendors, or someone you are potentially going to sell your company to, won’t be able to easily see that you rented a crappy office in the wrong part of town and you haven’t always looked as high end as you look now. Why show the world that instability?
But the biggest reason is that if you don’t hire a registered agent, the New York Secretary of State will deliver service of process to you by mail. How trustworthy is getting legal notices by mail? How overworked is the Secretary of State’s office? Do you really believe they will get you your important legal documents in a timely manner?
We scan all documents in real time to you from our Albany office. There are a lot of other reasons we’ve highlighted here about our New York Registered Agent service — why not sign up now?
