Fee, timeline, and tax basics for a Ohio LLC.
A Ohio 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 Ohio LLC is consistently profitable enough to justify the extra payroll work.
Ohio charges $99 to file the Articles of Organization, a fairly ordinary, middle-of-the-road filing fee. Processing time depends on how Ohio is running that week and whether you file online or mail it in; check the Ohio Secretary of State site for the current estimate before you plan around it. On the ongoing side, Ohio does not charge a separate recurring annual or biennial report fee ($0).
Between the $99 filing fee and an optional registered-agent service, most Ohio LLC owners have a clear first-year number well before they file anything. Use the LLC cost calculator to total up filing, agent, and report costs together for Ohio, then check the sole proprietor comparison to see the tradeoff between an LLC and staying unincorporated.
| Filing document | Articles of Organization |
| State filing fee | $99 |
| Recurring report fee | $0 |
Ohio publishes these figures directly; they are current for 2026 but worth double checking before you file, since fees can change.
Ohio does not require you to file an operating agreement with the state, but skipping one leaves your LLC governed by Ohio's default LLC statute, which may not match how you actually want to run the business.
Ohio charges $99 to file the Articles of Organization, which is a fairly ordinary, middle-of-the-road filing fee. After that, Ohio does not charge a separate recurring annual or biennial report fee; use the LLC cost calculator for your full first-year number.
No. Most people file the Articles of Organization themselves directly with Ohio's Secretary of State. A lawyer can help with a custom operating agreement for a Ohio LLC or a more complex ownership setup, but Ohio does not require one to form the LLC itself.
Ohio does not require a separate ongoing report fee once the LLC is filed.
Usually not, unless you have a specific reason like Ohio's legal system or tax treatment. If your business actually operates somewhere other than Ohio, you will likely need to register as a foreign LLC there too, which means paying Ohio and that other state instead of just one.
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.