Fee, timeline, and tax basics for a Illinois LLC.
A Illinois LLC is not taxed differently than a sole proprietorship by default; profit simply passes through to your personal return. Any savings come later from an S-corp election once your Illinois LLC is consistently profitable enough to justify the extra payroll work.
Illinois charges $150 to file the Articles of Organization, on the pricier side compared with most other states. Processing time depends on how Illinois is running that week and whether you file online or mail it in; check the Illinois Secretary of State site for the current estimate before you plan around it. On the ongoing side, Illinois charges a moderate recurring fee that is easy to plan around ($75).
Between the $150 filing fee and an optional registered-agent service, most Illinois LLC owners have a clear first-year number well before they file anything. Use the LLC cost calculator to see your projected first-year LLC spend for Illinois, then check the sole proprietor comparison to compare the two structures side by side.
| Filing document | Articles of Organization |
| State filing fee | $150 |
| Recurring report fee | $75 |
Illinois publishes these figures directly; they are current for 2026 but worth double checking before you file, since fees can change.
Processing time depends on Illinois's current workload and whether you file online or by mail; the Illinois Secretary of State's site lists current turnaround times, since they change throughout the year.
Illinois does not require you to file an operating agreement with the state, but skipping one leaves your LLC governed by Illinois's default LLC statute, which may not match how you actually want to run the business.
Illinois charges $150 to file the Articles of Organization, which is on the pricier side compared with most other states. After that, Illinois charges a moderate recurring fee that is easy to plan around; use the LLC cost calculator for your full first-year number.
No. Most people file the Articles of Organization themselves directly with Illinois's Secretary of State. A lawyer can help with a custom operating agreement for a Illinois LLC or a more complex ownership setup, but Illinois does not require one to form the LLC itself.
Illinois charges a moderate recurring fee that is easy to plan around, currently $75 on the recurring schedule the state sets, on top of the original filing fee.
Priya covers tax, regulation, and compliance: the rules that decide what you can and cannot do, usually filed in an obscure subsection that most people skip. She reads federal register notices in her spare time and is at peace with that being unusual.