What it costs, what to file, and how Louisiana taxes an LLC.
Louisiana charges $100 to file the Articles of Organization, a fairly ordinary, middle-of-the-road filing fee, and then charges a moderate recurring fee that is easy to plan around after that. The rest below covers the actual paperwork, the tax question everyone asks, and what Louisiana expects from an LLC once it is formed.
Filing document: Articles of Organization. State filing fee: $100. Recurring report fee: $35. Louisiana sets these amounts, and they can change year to year, so confirm the current fee on the Louisiana Secretary of State site before you file.
Add the $100 filing fee to a registered-agent service if you use one, and you have most of what it takes to get a Louisiana LLC on the books in year one. After formation, Louisiana charges a moderate recurring fee that is easy to plan around, which is the number to plan for every year after the first. Use the LLC cost calculator to check your full formation and first-year cost for your Louisiana LLC's specific plans.
Louisiana sets its own flat filing fee rather than basing it on revenue or number of members, which is why the $100 charge applies the same way whether your Louisiana LLC has one owner or five. The recurring fee works the same way: a flat amount Louisiana bills on its own schedule, not tied to how much the business makes. That predictability is one of the few upsides of a flat-fee system like Louisiana's.
Usually not, unless you have a specific reason like Louisiana's legal system or tax treatment. If your business actually operates somewhere other than Louisiana, you will likely need to register as a foreign LLC there too, which means paying Louisiana and that other state instead of just one.
No. By default, a Louisiana LLC is taxed the same way a sole proprietorship or partnership would be. Any tax savings for a Louisiana LLC come from electing S-corp status once profit is high enough, which you can check with the LLC tax calculator.
Processing time depends on Louisiana's current workload and whether you file online or by mail; the Louisiana Secretary of State's site lists current turnaround times, since they change throughout the year.
Louisiana does not require you to file an operating agreement with the state, but skipping one leaves your LLC governed by Louisiana's default LLC statute, which may not match how you actually want to run the business.
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.